Our Army at War #218

Our Army at War #218 (On Sale: February 3, 1970) has a cover by Joe Kubert.

This issue begins with our Sgt. Rock cover-story, "Medic" by Robert Kanigher and Russ Heath.

Next we have a reprint from Our Fighting Forces #5, "The Tortoise and the Hare Went to War" by John Reed, Sam Burlockoff, and Joe Giella.

Sam Burlockoff started out at DC in 1943 as an inker working on such strips as King, The Justice Society of America, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman. Around the same time he was working for MLJ on The Shield, The Web and Dusty. He later moved on to Quality where he inked Blackhawk, Captain Triumph and Plastic Man. He returned to DC in the 1950s to work on a number of mainly war stories, this time doing pencils or full art. His last DC story was this one from 1955.

After that final stint at DC he worked for Atlas and Eastman Color and on a number of newspaper strips, such as Flash Gordon, Apartment 3-G and The Saint. He worked on comics for overseas syndication and also drew illustrations for encyclopedias and coloring books. He retired in 1989.

The final story in this issue is "Frightened Boys... or Fighting Men?" written and drawn by Sam Glansman. This is the first of Glanzman's U.S.S. Stevens stories that he would write and draw for DC war comics for the next eight years. These stories were based on Glanzman's own experiences in World War II on the destroyer U.S.S. Stevens.

Sam Glansman broke into comics in 1939 working at Funnies, Inc. a "packager" that supplied comics to publishers. There, for Centaur Publications, he wrote text stories with some art for Amazing-Man Comics. Later for Harvey Comics, he created Fly-Man, writing and drawing the feature for at least two issues. He also contributed to Harvey's All-New Short Story Comics, Champ Comics (doing the Human Meteor) and Green Hornet Comics. His comics career was cut short by World War II, where he did indeed serve in the Navy on the U.S.S. Stevens. When it was over Glansman chose to not return to comics, as the pay was not to his liking and he took to working in cabinet shops, lumber mills and boat yards. In the 1950s he would work at Republic Aviation installing machine guns on military jets.

Glansman toyed with some comic work in 1950, but not until 1958 that he would return to the field in earnest, working at Charlton Comics. There he drew war stories in Attack, Battlefield Action, Fightin' Air Force, Fightin' Marines, Submarine Attack, U.S. Air Force Comics and War at Sea through 1961, when he switched to Dell Comics. At Dell he drew Combat and Kona, as well as movie adaptations such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and the very similar book, Voyage to the Deep.

Beginning in 1964, Glansman worked regularly for both Dell and Charlton doing a ton of war books. At Charlton he was also drawing Tarzan and creating, with Joe Gill, Sarge Steel and Hercules, Adventures of the Man-God. With writer Willy Fran,z Glansman also created The Lonely War of Willy Schultz, about a U.S. Army captain conflicted by the war and his German heritage.

Once he made the shift to DC, Glansman never looked back. Besides his years on U.S.S. Stevens, Glansman drew the Haunted Tank feature in G.I. Combat from 1972 through 1986. In '86 he also started drawing Mercenaries in G.I. Combat and in 1988 he drew a few issues of Sgt. Rock. Beginning in 1993 Sam Glansman became the inker for a number of Jonah Hex mini-series drawn by Timothy Truman, his last being Jonah Hex Shadows West in 1999. His last work for DC was in the 9-ll book, DC published in 2002.

Sam Glansman did a handful of war stories for Marvel in the late 1980s and in the 1990s worked for Topps Comics inking Turok Dinosaur Hunter and Zorro. In 2003 Glansman began doing web-comics.

Edited by Joe Kubert.