It’s #WarComicsMonth and I have a stack of books that I’ve been saving since last year that I’ll be working my way through and hopefully remembering to review on this site (you know how these things go). They are from various eras and ages of comics as well as companies, ranging from Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos and Fightin’ Army to titles like Semper Fi and In Country: Vietnam. But I thought I’d start with this book, which is a history of the genre.

I picked this book up on a whim at the Baltimore Comic-Con. I knew that TwoMorrows Publishing was going to have a booth, so I highlighted them in my program and stopped by to see what was there. I’m not sure what I was looking for–probably something that seemed like it was in my “comfort zone” of comics–and I zeroed in on this and another book about the history of comics-based television. I’d recently read a book about science fiction in television, so I decided to pick up Our Artists at War, having seen it advertised in Previews a while back and being someone who has come to appreciate the genre in recent years.

Lovingly compiled by authors Richard J. Arndt and Steven Frears, Our Artists At War is a pretty comprehensive history of war comics, starting with the World War II era and moving into the present day, specifically focusing on the prominent creators and most well-known books. We get in-depth profiles of Sam Glanzman, Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby, Robert Kanigher, Archie Goodwin, and Will Franz, as well as more contemporary creators like Don Lomax, Garth Ennis and Wayne Vansant. These are the big names and the big characters–Sgt. Rock, Sgt. Fury, Enemy Ace–that you associate with the war comics genre and the authors get into the stories behind their creation as well as discuss the quality and impact of those books. When they get to the end of the war book era (the 1980s-1990s) and move into the modern day, we also see how the genre and the comics market changed to push those books away from the big publishers and more toward the independent side of things.

While I will say that there were times where I wanted to see more coverage of certain titles (not much about Blackhawk, and I would have loved for them to go deeper into The ‘Nam … but I’m a little biased in that regard), they do a great job telling the stories of these classic creators and characters. My own experience with the likes of Sgt. Rock is cursory at best, having read a few issues here and there, so to get some insight as to what went into the stories and an expert opinion on what made some of these books better than others was both great and entertaining.

The book, as far as I know, is still available through TwoMorrows. The print copy is $27.95, although they tend to have digital editions that are much cheaper. If you enjoy comics history and want to read about something other than capes, I really think this is worth it.

Keep, Sell, Donate, or Trash?

Keep.