VIETNAM JOURNAL COMIC BOOK!
Hard to find COLLECTOR'S ITEM!
Vietnam Journal by Don Lomax is one of the best comic book portrayals of Vietnam ever. It's probably one of the best works ever put down in any art form about the war. Lomax created Vietnam Journal back in the 1980’s for Apple Comics.
This issue is entitled HAWKS OF THE DARKHORSE. Contains an essay on what was going on "back in the world" from March 18-19th, 1967. Also includes an essay on USAF Sgt Joseph Andrew Matejov, MIA.
Written and illustrated by veteran Don Lomax, here is the Vietnam War told in an extraordinary graphic novel. The stories may be fiction, but their intensity and emotional resonance point to social and personal truths that go beyond mere facts.
The troops in Vietnam call war correspondent Scott Neithammer "Journal." His editors sent him to Southeast Asia to write what was happening in South Vietnam. But Neithammer discovers quickly that the real story about the Vietnam War was not at division or battalion headquarters. It was in the bush with soldiers who live with the slime, the stink, the constant fear and frustration of fighting a war that "the powers that be" would not let them win.
Sent to Vietnam to report on the conflict, Scott "Journal" Neithammer expects to do no more than produce another sterilized war report. However, he soon realizes that, "the real story was in the bush with the slime, the stink, the constant fear and frustration." Each episode is a mix of the absurd and horrific as Journal befriends an ever-changing cast of doomed soldiers. As he confronts the death, illogic, and contradiction around him, he becomes as conflicted as the war itself, finally losing his journalistic objectivity in a fit of frustrated rage. The black-and-white artwork is powerful, and Journal's world is a rumpled fusion of realism and caricature. Particularly moving are the few instances where a single image fills the page.
VIETNAM JOURNAL, the comic, was introduced by Apple Comics in 1987.
Vietnam War veteran Don Lomax created Scott “Journal” Neithammer who wants to tell the "truth" about Vietnam. Much like Lomax Journal is also a war veteran of the Korean War. Soon Journal discovers that there are many different
versions of truth and that some are safer to tell than others.
Soon though, Journal realizes it’s impossible to remain a noncombatant in this war. At times equally funny and horrifying, one can really feel the authors hand desperately wanted to tell the reader his story.
There is no better person than Lomax to tell this story. He was drafted into the Army in the fall of l965 at the age of 21, took basic at Fort Knox, AIT at Aberdeen, Maryland and was shipped out to Vietnam in the fall of 1966 on the USS General John Pope. At times it seems like the self taught Lomax was destined to tell this story in comic book form. Growing up, he was a huge fan of war comics like Blazing Combat and Two-Fisted Tales which is why his art has that EC-inflected style.
This comic book was never available to the mass market and was only sold in comic book specialty shops.
RARE and OUT OF PRINT! Impossible to find!
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