I've had dozens of comics I've wanted to discuss or review, at various times, but I don't want to do the whole series, or it is just a mini-series and 4 or 6 issues seems like a short review subject.  So, this is kind of a catch-all for all kinds of really awesome or memorable or just downright well-crafted comics, either one-shots, mini-series, short runs of a title or just single issues.  The unifying factor is that they all have something about them which I (in my moderately humble opinion) find "cool."

Your mileage may vary.

To launch this thread, we will start with a comic that ticks all of the boxes for me....

Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos #13




Creative Team:  Written and Drawn by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (you decide who did what, though I think it is safe to say Stan didn't draw it), inked by Dick Ayers, lettered by Artie Simek, colors uncredited, but GCD lists "Stan Goldberg?"

Synopsis:  Sgt Nicholas J Fury, US Army Rangers is on a date with Lady Pamela Hawley and they decided to go to "the pictures."  They watch a newsreel of the Howling Commandos returning from a mission and Nick finds the audience's reaction a bit subdued.  Pamela says the British don't like showing emotion, in public.  She's never been to a football match!  Then, the newsreel shows the new costumed "super-soldier," Captain America, in action....



The crowd cheers with enthusiasm, as if Wolverhampton Wanderers have beaten Leicester 3-nil.  Nick harumphs and gripes all the way out the theater.  The couple go to a pub (The Pig & Whistle) and sip tea (at a pub?!?), as Bull McGivney and his 2nd Attack Squad toadies enter the pub.  Bull starts to bully a young blond soldier, who he says is sitting in his seat.  He uses his rank to bully him even more; but Nick notices the soldier is standing his ground, rank or no rank.  However, he believes Bull will tear him apart.  Bull plants his foot into the soldier's backside and shoves him to the ground.  Nick has had enough, takes off his uniform jacket and proceeds to rework some of Bull's dental features. and as soon as the cry of "WAHOOOOOO!" is heard, the Howlers have entered into a full pitched brawl, with 2nd Squad.




The MPs rush in, whistles blaring and wills made out and filed with the chaplain, as they have to break up the Howlers and they don't have armor support or artillery.  Meanwhile, the blond soldier has snuck out and reported back to Bucky, that he thinks he has found their man.  Bucky asks if he will join them on the mission and Cap says no; but he may be needed as back up, if they fail. Cap then mentions their mission, a recon in France, to determine if the Germans are preparing for an invasion (uh, not with all of the US and Canadian troops there now, Stan).  They travel by submarine to Europe, then land on the shore via raft.  A sentry hears something, as they climb up the cliff face and Cap lassos him and yanks him over the side, to his death.  He then uses a motorcycle to smash through barbed wire entanglements, rather than just cut it or crawl under or climb over, because, why be stealthy in hostile territory?

Of course, the Germans, not being complete idiots (despite following the Nazis to their national doom), hear them and open fire....



They come across a large convoy of trucks and Cap is sure that this is part of a build-up.

Back in Blighty, the Howlers are busy training, somehow having been released from the stockade and with Fury and Dum-Dum with stripes still attached to their uniforms.  Kirby draws actual judo throws. (Fury executes a tomoe-nage, or "monkey-flip",  Dino has Reb in a standing arm/shoulder lock, and Gabe is executing a seoi-nage, or shoulder throw).

After more illustrations of actual techniques, Captain "Happy" Sam Sawyer critiques their work and notices Izzy Cohen warming his backside and provides him with a judo partner, then proceeds to execute a textbook hip sweep (harai-goshi).  This is Sam's idea of non-judicial punishment.

Back in France (presumably, as it would be easier to invade the British Isles from there, rather than Belgium or The Netherlands), Cap and Bucky observe the SS herding along forced laborers from various occupied countries, including Poland and Czechoslovakia.  They wonder why they are being used near the coast, rather than at a factory (building fortifications for the Atlantic Wall?)  They then see a trio of captured American  air crewmen, about to be executed, in violation of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War.  Cap has taken all he can stands and can stands no more....



Cap smashes som Nazis while Bucky frees the air crew.  The Germans bring in more men and Cap decides a retreat is in order and the five men fight their way back away from the oncoming Germans.

Back in Merry Olde England, the Howlers are "pickin' 'em up and layin' 'em down," double-timing back to amp, 3 miles away.  Sawyer is waiting for them and tells them to fall out and then tells Fury to meet him in the orderly room.  Fury asks when they will see some action and Sam tells him he is getting his wish.  Captain America has requested the Howling Commandos to aid him in his mission.  They are then deployed to France.  The come ashore and overwhelm some sentries, but one of them tosses a "potato masher" and Gabe is wounded.  Fury details Izzy to take him back to the coast and back to England.  German reinforcements, drawn by the explosion, move in force, with flammenwerfers.  Dum-Dum and Percy have outflanked a concrete gun emplacement and kill the gun crew.  They then use it to provide support for the rest of the Howlers to get inland, away from the Germans.  They spot a train nearby and hop aboard, after killing some "krauts."  Inside a freight car, they find some of the laborers.  One them, a blond man, tells Fury to hide his weapons and uniforms, before the guards come back.  Fury recognizes the man as the blond soldier that Bull McGivney was bullying...



An SS officer enters, with a Hitler Youth, who is put in charge of the men. They are marched out and he selects the blond soldier for a special detail. Fury offers him a blanket, with a Thompson SMG hidden inside, but he turns it down. Fury and the rest are moved into a tunnel, where the Germans are preparing an invasion tunnel, across the English Channel, to Britain!

A channel tunnel? Who'd ever believe that?

The tunnel is vast, reinforced with concrete and with rail lines. The Germans could move a whole army through it. They hear an explosion and suddenly, they are joined by Captain America and Bucky, who overpower the SS guards.



The Howlers grab weapons and fire on other guards. An officer calls to a forward section and orders them to prepare to ambush the infiltrators. They set up an assault gun to hit their rail car, when they come in range. The Howler dive off the car and look for cover, while Cap and Bucky run towards the gun. Cap catches a "potato masher" and rams it into the gun's open breach, knocking it out of commission. However, he catches part of the blast and is stunned. Fury and Bucky drag him back. Cap tells Fury that there is a detonator rigged, in the forward section of the tunnel, in case the British discover the tunnel. They have to get to it and set it off. the split up to find it. There are hatches into the channel for escape. Fury and Reb find an escape hatch, but are cornered by SS. They try to bluff them, but they have the advantage. Then, an explosion goes off and Fury orders his men up the ladder and out the hatch, as cap must have set off the detonator....



The next day, at a hospital in England, the Howlers visit Reb and Fury in the hospital, recovering from their injuries.  They get word that Gabe is recovering, too.  Fury says they didn't see another sign of Cap & Bucky and then Fury realizes that the Hitler Youth must have been Bucky, in disguise.  They hear thumping on the wall and a muffled voice yelling for them to quiet down and we switch to the other side and see Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, recovering from their injuries, and Steve banging on the wall with a crutch.

The issue ends with a "Yubiwaza" ad, purporting to give you the secret to smashing opponents with a finger poke and that the instructor's 98 lb wife can beat a 200 lb man.



The instructor, Nelson J Flemming, was a legit teacher of Sosuishi-Ryu jiu-jitsu and the woman, Yoshie Imanami, was his real wife and a practicioner of jiu-jitsu.  The "book," however, was a fraud, consisting of 14 pages of basic nerve strikes.  The name, "Yubiwaza" meant "finger strikes" and these were basic jabs or punches to nerve clusters and vulnerable points of the body, like joints, the groin, the solar plexus and the like.  It was like scaling boxing down to a basic punch.  It was one of the early comic book ads purporting to teach the deadly Asian arts of self-defense, which led to later tomfoolery, like Count Dante, in the 70s, and ninjas, in the 80s and 90s, with tales of "Dim Mak," aka "The Death Touch."  Even Bloodsport trotted out this "bullshido," which isn't surprising, because the real Frank Dux is one of a line of martial arts frauds, along with Count Dante, the various Chi masters, pressure point fighters, and Steven Seagal.

Why is it cool?-  Nazi-smashing, commando raids, giant invasion tunnels, bar brawls, real judo techniques, motorcycle stunts, World War 2, The Howling Commandos and Captain America.

This thing is a feast of action, as only Kirby could deliver.  Captain America has always been cool, flipping around and kicking Nazi ass, since 1941, and nobody drew it better than Kirby, especially at this stage.  Kirby was at the height of his game and Cap is all over the place and the Howlers are Wahooing right beside him.  Kirby hated Sgt Fury, because it was a fantasy of war; but it captured the feel of those great 60s action/war movies, like The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare, where you throw reality out the window and just hang on as they blow up every German in sight and occassionally die heroic deaths.  Those films were, largely, fantasies of war, 20 years removed from the reality of things.  Marvel swiped plots from many of them, as did Italian "Macaroni Combat" films, like Inglorious Bastards (which is a Dirty Dozen rip-off, which them inspired the Tarantino version and mis-spelling).  So, take that action, throw the Howling Commandos in there, who make the Dirty Dozen look the British Army on parade, before the monarch, then add a red, white and blue Nazi-smasher and you just have a recipe for pure adrenalized fun!

This was the first meeting between Cap and Fury and the pair would be intertwined, for years to come.  The Howlers also met a younger Reed Richards, who served with the OSS, while Ben Grimm was a fighter pilot, backgrounds that were lost or transported to later-era wars, as time wore on.  You have to remember, the FF started in 1961 and they were the ages of the Mercury 7, who were WW2 and Korea vets.

The training sequences feature real judo techniques, which just happen to mirror western catch wrestling, which had been taught for years to soldiers, going back to the Civil War, especially with the influx of Irish and English immigrants.  Judo is, at its foundation, a form of grappling and there are just so many ways to manipulate the body and to use someone's weight against them.  Each refined the techniques based on their environments.  Judo and jiu-jitsu have many techniques designed around the gi, which mirrored the typical clothing of the Japanese, Chinese and Okinawans.  Weestern catch wrestling reflected the rules that were developed for sporting competition.  The military didn't teach sport, though, and applied the dirty stuff.  This was further enhanced by Asian streetfighting techniques, taught by former Shanghai policeman William Fairbairn.  He taught things like neck and collar bone strikes, kidney punches, eye gouging, "fish-hooking", joint breaking and other fast and effective techniques to cripple and incapacitate an opponent, so you could get away.  That was combined with knife techniques to efficiently kill and silence an enemy, without a lot of swinging the blade about and slashing at wrists; just grab the guy by the lower jaw, from behind, and jam the knife under the base of the skull.

Kirby, as an infantryman, would have trained in hand-to-hand combat and that is what he shows.   on the following page of the one I displayed, Dum-Dum has Fury in a textbook wristlock, with the hand twisted in the opposite direction from the head.  In the next panel, Dino tries to do a foot sweep on Reb, while Gabe executes another hip sweep on Percy.

The uncredited colorist falls into the usual trap of coloring the SS officer's uniform as black, when the Waffen SS field uniforms matched the Wehrmacht, with the same grey and green-grey, but different unit insignia and rank collar tabs, as well as the SS Death's Head on their caps, instead of the Wehrmacht eagle.  Hitler Youth and other young recruits did serve in some occupied areas, especially later in the war, to free up soldiers to fight on the front.  The Germans also recruited Russians and Poles to use in occupation units.  The Allies came across large groups of them during the Battle of Normandy and they were often the first to surrender and were also often shot by German officers, to stop them surrendering.  The SS troops were more fanatical and the Hitler Youth were often funneled there.  By 1944, the Waffen SS were getting the cream of German recruits, which angered the Wehrmacht and caused some of the problems in the German military structure, especially after the attempt on Hitler's life.  He already distrusted the High Command and the involvement of many high ranking Wehrmacht officers made him put complete trust into the SS, from 1944 to the end.

Kirby had faced SS troops and Wehrmacht soldiers and often depicted both and both were guilty of atrocities, though the SS committed far more than the Wehrmacht, especially against civilians and captured troops.  Fury and the Howlers might be subject to Hitler's "Commando Order," which called for the immediate execution of any captured commando forces, regardless of whether they were in uniform.  Many field commanders ignored these orders, but many carried them out.  Meanwhile, the Allies did not always take prisoners, especially airborne units, as they didn't have time or manpower and gave orders to shoot to kill, unless they were acting in support of regular armor and infantry and had the manpower or needed intelligence.  The Allies also used phosphorus grenades and artillery rounds, which caused many enemy deaths, by intense, painful flame.  Not to mention flamethrowers, which were used on all sides.

Sgt Fury was often at its best with wild action, somewhere in Europe, in some secret Nazi installation and this has exactly that.  captain America was usually at his best when he s wading through hordes of Nazi soldiers, hurling bodies left and right, on the way to his objective...often a Nazi super-weapon or secret installation.  We have that here.  Both things work in harmony and Fury and Cap are such a natural fit you just can't help but to enjoy the story and the art.  There are even the comical touches, like fury trying to sip tea, with pinky extended, like a gentleman, to please Lady Pamela, or the judo scenes or the usual banter between the Howlers, not to mention the wild brawl.  The only thing you don't get is Pvt Steve Rogers giving Bull McGivney his comeuppance, since that gets handed off to Fury.  You just want to see McGivney take a poke at Steve and see him catch his wrist and hold him locked in place and force him to his knees, or catch the wrist and execute a throw and then maybe a few more, when Bull comes at him again.  However, given the secret identity conceit maintained in this era (and the 40s), we would more likely see a comical scene of Steve bumbling out of the path of Bull, causing the bruiser to crash into things, like a matador sidestepping a bull (the bovine kind), but with the clumsiness of a Don Knotts.

This is the kind of thing I would have liked to have seen in a WW2 Captain America movie franchise, rather than one movie's worth (with a chunk of that used for a montage), instead of zipping him into the future.  Marvel wanted to get to the Avengers; but, I wanted to see more wartime Cap.  Too bad they didn't just do a mini-series with just that, the adventures of Captain America and the Howling Commandos.  Closest we got was Agent Carter teaming with the Howlers and Falcon & The Winter Soldier.

This will likely be an irregular series of reviews and features, filtered in with my other ongoing threads.  I still intend to get back to the spy comics, once I clean off my plate, a bit.  Mostly to kind of wrap it up with a couple of key works.