“Corpse on the Imjin!” And Other Stories (The EC Comics Library, 1)

Besides Mad, Harvey Kurtzman created the scrupulously researched and superbly crafted anthologies Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, war comics without heroic, cigar-chomping sergeants, wisecracking privates from Brooklyn, or cartoon Nazis and “Japs” to be mowed down by the Yank heroes. These comics are an unflinching look at the horror and madness of combat throughout history. Kurtzman employed some of the finest of the EC artists, including the legendary Jack Davis, John Severin, and Wallace Wood, but his vision came through clearest in the dozen or so stories he both wrote and drew himself, in his uniquely bold, slashing, cartoony-but-dead-serious style (“Stonewall Jackson,” “Iwo Jima,” “Rubble,” “Big ‘If ’,” and Kurtzman’s own favorite, “Air Burst”). “Corpse on the Imjin!” is rounded off with a dozen or so stories written and laid out by Kurtzman and drawn by a “short-timers,” i.e. cartoonists whose contributions to his war books only comprised a story or two.