Lurid art of fighting
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday September 12, 2009
Military history dresses up in uncomfortable fancy clothes. War Comics: A Graphic HistoryBy Mike ConroyIlex, 189pp, $55CamouflageBy Tim NewarkThames & Hudson, 192pp, $49.95FOR some, those who believe books are there to be read, the idea of a coffee-table book is anathema. While not taking such a hard line, I must confess to some ethical doubt about these two publications, which can only be described as coffee-table books with a war theme. On the other hand, the legacy of a childhood spent making model soldiers and obsessively reading books about World Wars I and II €” plus the sheer visual richness of both these books €” gives them an almost irresistible allure.War Comics €“ as its subtitle, A Graphic History, implies €“ is an overview of a genre that made its first significant appearance in the US and Britain during World War II. In terms of popularity and impact, this was also its heyday. In a pre-television world, comics were a staple entertainment for not just boys but also less literary-inclined men.This, combined with a conscious effort by both comics publishers and government and the military to use them as propaganda to enhance the war effort, meant that from 1941 (when the US became involved in the war) to 1945 such titles as Daredevil Battles Hitler and The Fighting Yank were selling enough to be part of mainstream culture.As the titles suggest, these were simplistic, nationalistic and sometimes racist stories, whose text seldom matched the richness or artistry of their graphics. The irony is that, after the war, as the popularity of comics gradually decreased, thanks mainly to the growth of television, the quality of the writing increased.The first glimpses ofan alternative vision came to light in the early '50s with EC Comics's Two-Fisted Tales, which really did attempt to show the bleakness and suffering of war, even if through a deliciously savage and luridly voyeuristic visual style. Many decades later, as comics moved to the periphery of mass consciousness, Art Spiegelman defied the trend with his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Nazis and the Holocaust, Maus, published in two volumes in the 1980s, while more recently Joe Sacco revolutionised war reportage with books such as 1993's Palestine and 2004's The Fixer, based on his experiences in Sarajevo.There are many more outstanding if obscure artists who have raised the war comic to great heights and all are well documented here. But while this book serves as a great visual overview of the genre, Conroy disappoints with his lack of contextualisation of either individual works or the war comic as a whole.Camouflage never quite justifies its rather absurd concept and cover €“ which shows a pink camouflage stiletto juxtaposed with a combat boot €“ but it does at least attempt to delve deeper into the social context of its subject. The author, Tim Newark, despite his slightly comical background as an editor of Military Illustrated, a magazine devoted to military uniforms, traces camouflage from its original source in the natural world, through to its gradual adoption in warfare and its later co-option in recent decades by a diverse field ranging from big game hunters to fashion designers and anti-war protesters.He gets no small help from the near-ubiquitous British public intellectual Jonathan Miller, who provides a lengthy and well-researched introduction explaining how camouflage works in nature. Newark then follows things roughly chronologically, beginning with early examples, such as the animal skins that were worn by Native American hunters, the Scottish tartan and the foliage used by an invading army attacking the castle in William Shakespeare's Macbeth.The highlights of this lavishly printed book are, of course, the hundreds of photos and illustrations that speak more than words to explain such a visual phenom enon. The pub-lishers have spared little expense and just about any page will reveal several striking images. Newark does a good job of organising these in a way that makes sense and saying about as much about them as anyone could without sounding pretentious. Of particular interest are the sections on camouflage artists and the influences running back and forth between the military and the art worlds.In the end, though, camouflage is, well, just camouflage. Like Conroy, Newark is no Susan Sontag or Greil Marcus. War Comics and Camouflage are beautiful coffee-table books about slightly incongruous subjects €“ but not much more than that.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald