Fantagraphics will release a 200-page hardcover collection of the brilliant comics from Warren Publishing’s short-lived war comic anthology magazine, Blazing Combat, in December. The collection will feature reproductions from the original film negatives.
The four quarterly issues of Blazing Combat, published in 1965 and 1966, were edited and written by Archie Goodwin. The artists on the series were a rogues gallery of top sixties talent, including Gene Colan, Frank Frazetta (who did all four covers), John Severin, Alex Toth, Al Williamson, Russ Heath, Reed Crandall, and Wally Wood.
The stories covered the full range of organized conflict, concentrating on World War II, but going back to the Revolutionary War and forward into the Vietnam War, which was raging at the time. They were “unified by a humanistic theme of the personal costs of war, rather than by traditional men’s adventure motifs,” as Fantagraphics’ description put it.
The anti-war stories were the reason for the magazine’s brief lifespan. “Landscape,” a story from the second issue reprinted in the Fantagraphics collection, led to protests and distributors refusing to carry the title.
A trade paperback collection of the Blazing Combat stories released by
