[MarkWarner]

With last week's book of World War I cartoons, Between Shots, the reading group again moved into new territory. I think that it worked well and we certainly should do more "adventurous" stuff on a regular basis.

But, for this week it's back to a good old fashioned comic! The book is Navy Patrol #1 and can be found @ https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=60987.

According to the GCD notes, this is actually non-fiction. Well, I guess that should actually read a "big pinch of salt non-fiction". The story we are concentrating on is the first one "The Defeat of the Japanese Navy" ... which at only 4 pages long appears to indicate that it was a rather easy task! But, I think it might have been a tad tricky!

[bowers]

 This one is, indeed, non-fiction. We get a very good account of one of the last great naval battles ever fought, the Battle of Leyte Gulf and it's related actions. Although the art is a bit rough, the writing more than makes up for it. The separate actions are clearly explained in each story, and the action is kept at a fast pace. It was also written respectfully- not once are the Japanese referred to as "Japs" or "Nips". This is a bit unusual in American war comics of the early fifties.
My favorite account was "The Hawk is Among the Chickens", one of the most knock-down, drag-out "David and Goliath sea battles of the war. Tiny destroyers and destroyer escorts throwing themselves at battleships and heavy cruisers and paying an awful price for their determination. The writer also correctly tells us that no one knows why Adm. Kurita broke off when he had pretty much accomplished his victory. I like to think that he had had enough of the crazy sailors who refused to lose.
The last story was, of course, fiction. Not bad - about the same as any DC or Charlton backup story.
Quite a good book, as war comics go. Thumbs up from me. Cheers, Bowers

[Morgus]

thanks, bowers...I didn't know a thing about the battle and from just the facts given so freely ASSUMED it had to be true. Glad to see they kept to the facts. You know, this is a great example of what comics do best as a medium. You can get a lot of information in a very compact format which conveys the excitement of the topic. And it entertains. A lot of the time I'm grateful when the first story is over, but this one I read all the way through. I wish TORA TORA TORA had been this good. ANYBODY know who the artist was or could be? I didn't mind him and I'm guessing he saved all his attention to the equipment, tactics and profiles of the leaders involved. Loved the way some people would seem to break frame and stare right at you like they do in those HISTORY channel documentaires. The second story seemed to have everybody with the same expression on their faces all the way through. The Steve-Canyon-in-deep-thought look.

[crashryan]

Not being much of a war comics fan I read this somewhat grudgingly. I agree with earlier commentators that the story is even-handed and the writer strives for accuracy. I was a bit confused at the end of chapter two. It's written as if the Japanese fleet is wiped out, but it's really only part of the fleet. I should have paid more attention. Like many documentaries, the story offers facts without personalities. It's rather  diagrammatic. Still the writer accomplishes the task set out for him. I wish the editor had done a better job proofreading. The misspellings and changes of tense irk me.

The filler is like a typical Charlton war story. Meh.

Charlton also comes to mind when looking at the art. Occasionally the artists make a stab at drawing convincing machinery, but it's a halfhearted effort. At best the results are only approximate. Too many scenes are sloughed off with long shots and silhouettes. It makes me appreciate all the more what care Sam Glanzman put into similar stories at Dell and Charlton. At least it's better than Bill Molno!

The figures are mediocre, though since this is principally a hardware story it doesn't matter. Honest effort is put into drawing the Japanese admiral. The strangest character is Admiral Halsey, who obviously has been drawn from photos. The specificity of his features sticks out like a sore thumb amidst the generic cast.

The cover art is misleading. I expected a Korean War story.

Not my cup of tea, but not a waste of time, either.

[narfstar]

Back in the days before everyone had hundred of channels, or even a TV, people got their news from the newspapers and news reels at the theater. To me the story reads like a news reel. It is effective at telling the story. Eugene Hughes is one of the artists on the story. He was cranking it out like a Charlton artists and as editor at Stanley Morse. I think this may have been penciled by Montellero though. For the art spotters in the group, please check out Battle Cry 3. First story is signed Montellero the next Hughes. This story looks to have the layout of the Montellero without much going on in the panel. and the inks of Hughes.

[SuperScrounge]

The Defeat of the Japanese Navy! - I think I saw a movie a few weeks/months ago based on this incident. John Wayne played Halsey. Decided to read all 5 parts. Interesting, aside from the movie I wasn't very familiar with this battle. The presentation sometimes took away from the drama of the events (telling what happened as opposed to showing), but given the limited space they had to tell it it worked.

Command - Odd. On the one hand it could have been an interesting start to a longer story, but a one page text story... the twist at the end was also odd, again, if it had been the start of a longer story more could have been done with it. As it is the story was just... there. Not terrible, but not overly compelling either.

Fish Away! - Nice.

The Hunter and the Hunted! - Okay.

I don't normally comment on the ads, but that Mini-Gym ad was unintentionally funny. 1955... when being a good supervisor meant you could deck any troublemakers under you! And the babes will go for you too!  Nowadays such a boss would be arrested, but then... you were da man!
Was the art from the C.C. Beck studio? It kinda had a Captain Marvel vibe.

[betaraybdw]

I guess I should comment since I scanned this book. I found it for 99 cents, you'll note the tape repaired tears on the edge of almost every page, when I got this book the edge looked like Wolverine had taken a few swipes at it. I spent most of an evening with a roll of scotch tape getting this thing to a state where I could scan it.

I do like this book (and the series). The art is decent enough and I really like the covers.

I'm somewhat of a buff on the WWII Pacific Campaign and these stories seem to tell the tale efficiently enough.

Not my favorite war comic, but not bad and even with my existing familiarity with the subject matter I was not bored.

I give it a "C" (7/10)  rating

I was disappointed there was no Korean War naval aviation story, but then we all know not to trust the cover of a comic to tell you what is inside.

@Morgus   I love Tora Tora Tora, I watch it almost every Dec 7th  (and quite often in early June I watch Midway or The Longest Day, sometimes both.)

@SuperScrounge I was thinking the John Wayne movie you were talking about was In Harm's Way, but then I remembered that Wayne didn't play Halsey in that.

So I had to look at Wayne's filmography and could not find anywhere where he played Adm Halsey though his other Naval Officer roles were in:

Operation Pacific
They Were Expendable

Note: I had to look up what "Gobs" meant, apparently (Way) back in the day that was a slang term for an ordinary US Navy sailor. I'd never heard that. All the old Marines I have ever met from back then referred to them (derisively) as "swabbies".  In the era I was in the Marines (late 80's to early 90's) we just said sailors (if we were being nice, which wasn't often), most of the time we called them "squids". 

[narfstar]

This is where I learned the term Gob  http://www.comics.org/issue/207178/

[crashryan]

I always thought gob was one of those words that everyone "of a certain age" knew. I see it wasn't as widespread as I believed. I remember running into the word constantly in my youth. Dad had been in the Navy since the mid 1930s but I never heard him or any of his fellow seamen use it. Instead gob seemed to be a pop culture term. I'd often see it in movie ads: "High-Seas Hi-Jinks with Two Gals and a Gob!"

I got curious and Googled the word. It's identified as an Americanism coined between 1900 and 1915. No one seems to know where it came from. H.L. Mencken puzzled over it in the "War Slang" section of The American Language (1921):

Even gob, doughboy and leatherneck were not new. Gob and leatherneck had been in use in the navy for a long while, though the common civilian designation for a sailor had been jackie. The origin of the terms is much disputed. Gob is variously explained as a derivative from the Chinese (?) word gobshite, and as the old word gob, signifying a large, irregular mass, applied to a new use. The original meaning of gobshite I don

[SuperScrounge]

@SuperScrounge I was thinking the John Wayne movie you were talking about was In Harm's Way, but then I remembered that Wayne didn't play Halsey in that.

So I had to look at Wayne's filmography and could not find anywhere where he played Adm Halsey though his other Naval Officer roles were in:

Operation Pacific
They Were Expendable

In Harm's Way sounds right as the title.

Clearly I misremembered Wayne's role. His character seemed to be in charge so I assumed it was Halsey. Whoops.

[narfstar]

good research Crash

[pabrides]

Pretty good story, good writing, good images, fair and not too bloody, little color bleeding and no appreciable mis-registry, but I'm just tired of reading about war for 60 years.... aren't you?

[narfstar]

I have to retract my art ID. The cover is ID'd as Alice Kirkpatrick with a telling K that I can not find. But I noticed the similarity in inking to Eugene Hughes. So I looked closely at the splash and there on the sword was the initials AK. So the art was by Alice Kirkpatrick

[MarkWarner]

am not big on war comics, plus I am always a bit nervous about the language and attitudes in some of these sorts of old books. So, my dread level was extremely high with a WWII one about the Japanese navy.

But all was cool! It was an excellent read. As I know nothing about the subject, I do not know how accurate it is. BUT the message seems to be that the Japanese navy messed up with communications and not carrying their mission through. I saw a program about Pearl Harbour which said that the Japanese gave up half-way through their plan and if they had continued things would have been a lot worse for the Americans. Or summat like that.

The last story "Fish Away!" was a bit of a filler and personally I could have done with the four pages being used in the main feature.

Verdict: An very surprising hit, and I thoroughly recommend it!