American Century: Scars and Stripes (American Century (DC Comics))

Chaykin, Howard,Tischman, David

ISBN 10: 1563897911 / ISBN 13: 9781563897917

Published by Vertigo, 2001

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: American Century: Scars and Stripes (American Century (DC Comics))
• Publisher: Vertigo
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1563897911
• ISBN 13: 9781563897917
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

It's 1950, and Harry Block, a fighter jock who distinguished himself in the skies over Europe in World War II, is recalled to active duty in Korea. Harry decides to bail on the president's "offer, " his career, and his keeping up-with-the-Joneses suburban life. He hijacks a plane, reinvents himself as Harry Kraft, and sets out to live an extraordinary new life of action and adventure, set against the tumultuous halfway point of the American Century. Harry fetches up in the hazy tropical heat of Guatemala, a sleepy dictatorship under the thumb of the American U.S. Fruit Corporation and run by a shaky president besieged by rumblings of popular uprisings and military coups. Here he's content to fly cargo planes for small-time smugglers and enjoy the local attractions, but he can't escape the land he fled from, particularly when the C.I.A., the army, communist agitators, the president's wife and U.S. Fruit all seem to be conspiring to try to kill him

Reviews

This hard-boiled graphic novel set in the early '50s hints at what the comic strip "Steve Canyon" might've been like had it been penned by a cynical, leftist libertine rather than a right-wing cold warrior. Its antihero is ex-World War II fighter pilot Harry Block, who turns his back on the American dream, fakes his death, and decamps to Guatemala, where, getting embroiled in espionage, murder, and revolution, he mixes it up with the CIA., Communist rebels, and the most powerful force in the country, the U.S. Fruit Company. Nearly any page would make "Steve Canyon" stalwarts blanch. This is adult-but-mainstream comics fare, boasting rough language, brutal violence, and blatant sex. Creator Chaykin, best known for his groundbreaking sf satire American Flagg (1987), is comics' foremost exponent of pulp, and his gritty approach and wise-ass attitude give American Century its oomph. The book would've been even better, however, had Chaykin drawn it himself, instead of just coauthoring and designing it; his own noirish drawing style beats the somewhat stiff realism of the comic's illustrators. Gordon Flagg
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