I blame you, Charley’s War, for setting me up for total disappoint for all other serialized war comics. A Sailor’s Story, though it has a similarly appealing, technically excellent cover, a comparable premise (life in wartime), and some very positive reviews, doesn’t even begin to measure up.
A Sailor’s Story is a reissue of a collection of comics by Sam Glanzman about his time in the U.S. Navy. Though I thought this collection was overall barely readable, I’ll start with the good. He’s an excellent illustrator, showing great technical prowess in depicting ships, equipment, and life above and below deck. Though some of his images are a bit dark, you really get the sense of what life at sea looked like, at times lackadaisical and at times truly terrifying.
Unfortunately, that illustrative prowess doesn’t extend to storytelling ability. Though the comics included in this anthology began as single issues, there is no real sense of an arc from tale to tale. Furthermore each story is haltingly told; even Glanzman’s interesting beginning—enlisting young and essentially orphaned—starts promisingly and then is dropped off as though forgotten. Hilarious, bumbling, and brutal shipmates are introduced, but given pretty much nothing to do. Battles are fought with no historical context for the uninitiated.
A Sailor’s Story seems like a love letter to a moment in Glanzman’s life, written for a specific audience of naval history buffs, and even more specifically, for those fascinated with WWII warships and their weapons. This seems further evidenced by the forward and endnotes, love letters to Glanzman from avid fans, including praise from cartoonists like Joe Kubert and Stan Lee. To those readers, it might have some real appeal. But unlike the comparably themed Charley’s War, which although fictional, manages to be a pretty solid catalog of the events in the trenches of World War I, A Sailor’s Story refuses to see beyond the end of its nose, or the bow of its ship, to tell a compelling and cohesive story to those not already completely in the know.
A Sailor’s Story
by Sam Glanzman
ISBN: 9780486798127
Dover Publications, 2015
