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Enda80
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
108 Posts |
 Posted - 05/21/2009 : 5:58:53 PM
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Note that, while in the pulps, the Shadow, the Spider, and the Phantom Detective served in WWI (as did the homage character Night Raven), and Vietnam later proved a fertile breeding ground for fictional crimebusters, crimefighters, vigilantes, "Black Ops" agents, and so forth, World War II produced few crimefighters.
http://woldnewton.blogspot.com/2009/04/serial-vigilantes-of-paperback-fiction.html
The Marksman, the Executioner, the Penetrator, MIA Hunter (Mark Stone; Joe R. Landsdale actually wrote some of those books), the Sharpshooter and numerous other paperback original series featured Vietnam veterans taking on the mob at home and abroad. This theme spread into film as well.
http://www.Jabootu.com/vcaugohtwo.htm
Unfortunately, and bewilderingly, in the thriller/action category things have actually been much more stifling. Here they seem to pick one film every five or ten years and then spend a decade creating an endless parade of patently derivative clones. In the ‘70s the DNA for these was extracted from Dirty Harry and its close relative Death Wish. Many of these retreads were numbingly rote. And when new wrinkles were occasionally introduced, they would often end up establishing their own subgenres. Vietnam Vet vigilantes, either singular or in teams, being an obvious example. [Note: Ironically, Paul Benjamin/Kersey of Death Wish notoriety, never saw combat, only having military accounting duties and serving in a MASH in various incarnations. He stood as far too old to serve in the Vietnam conflict. In fact, in the film, he served as a conscientious objector in the medical corps during the Korean War. However, many subsequent film vigilantes, such as John Eastland, the Exterminator, did serve in the Vietnam conflict. Also, Gordon's War came out before the film version of Death Wish and used vets as vigilantes.]
http://www.Jabootu.com/vcjanohtwo.htm
Coming fairly late in the "vigilante Viet Nam vets" cycle – a full five years, for example, after the somewhat similar Kill Squad – The Annihilators proves yet another cheesy Death Wish knock off. [Near as I can tell, the Vietnam vets trend petered out by the mid-1990's. Stephen Hunter introduced Bob Lee Swagger as a Vietnam veteran in a 1993 novel taking place in 1992. However, to accommodate Wahlberg's age, the film Shooter has Swagger active in Africa in the 1990's instead of Vietnam in the 1970's.]
http://www.fanzing.com/mag/fanzing36/feature2.shtml
http://www.captaincomics.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=399&Itemid=35
Anyway, I have established that World War I and the Vietnam War served as part of the backstory of quite a few vigilante characters. So how come World War II did not?
The only vigilante with a World War II backstory that I can think about from MVL or DC that occurs to me amounts to Harlan Krueger, the Hangman, who served (in the original stories; the sliding timescale ruins this) in World War II, despite debuting in an early 1970's issue of Werewolf By Night. One could also include Mike Hammer.
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Edited by - Enda80 on 05/21/2009 6:13:44 PM
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 05/22/2009 : 12:37:21 PM
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I was too young to watch it, but the detective in "Hawaiian Eye" wore a ring with a Free French insignia on it. Magnum PI also had a ring like that, was there ever a connection mentioned?
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 05/22/2009 : 3:57:31 PM
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The Vietnam War is often viewed as the American equivalent of what World War 1 is to Europeans: a bloody war of attrition with an ambiguous end that makes the soldiers who participated in it question the values that lead to the conflicts and made them last so long (of course this view is an oversimplification of these wars and really, to my mind, unintentionally diminished the sacrifices that soldiers made in the two wars both of which had immense influence on the world we live in today) . World War 2, on the other hand, is viewed as an unblemished conflict between good and evil (we'll forget about Stalin for a moment) so any soldiers who participated in it will not have any tortured second thoughts about what they acomplished during the conflict. There are hardly any anti-war narratives based on World War 2 while they are legion for both World War 1 and the Vietnam War.
"I am Temujin ... Barbarian ... I fight! I love! I conquer ... like a Barbarian!" |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 05/23/2009 : 04:03:54 AM
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| I can only think of one exception, the Easy Rawlings novels by Walter Mosley. Ezequiel "Easy" Rawlings is an African-american who moonlights as a private eye, and sometimes he has tormenting flashbacks of WWII. |
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niccolom
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Canada
118 Posts |
Posted - 05/23/2009 : 07:08:44 AM
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The only one I can think of that who had a WWII background was Donald Hamilton's creation Matt Helm. However, Helm was a spy not a vigilante. However, there were a couple of books where his prototaganists were criminals not spies or terrorists.
"When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk."
Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, aka "Tuco," aka "the Rat," aka "Ugly," aka "il Cattivo" |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 05/23/2009 : 2:59:58 PM
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| Wait, wait, didn't Mike Hammer have a WWII background? I recently re-read I, the jury and I think that's true. And Hammer is both a private eye and a vigilante, at least in this book. |
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niccolom
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Canada
118 Posts |
Posted - 05/26/2009 : 5:42:31 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Neville
Wait, wait, didn't Mike Hammer have a WWII background? I recently re-read I, the jury and I think that's true. And Hammer is both a private eye and a vigilante, at least in this book.
You're right, from Mike's Wiki write-up: Mike Hammer is a no-holds barred Battle of Guadalcanal veteran private investigator that carries a .45 Colt M1911, named "Betsy" in a shoulder harness under his left arm
"When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk."
Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, aka "Tuco," aka "the Rat," aka "Ugly," aka "il Cattivo" |
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Enda80
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
108 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 5:40:36 PM
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| Looking back, I see that the police in Death Wish had their genre saviness trip them up. Remember how they checked out Vietnam veterans first, thinking the vigilante might lie amongst them? Of course, the vigilante (Paul Kersey) turned out as a conscientious objector. I can just imagine the brain-storming session that led them to seek out Vietnam veterans: "Okay, so far, based on the cases of the the Executioner, the Marksman, the Assasin, the Revenger, the Sharpshooter, the Lone Wolf, the Avenger, the Penetrator, and the dozen plus other aggressors out there, this guy served in the Vietnam war. Get out the thesaurus, we'll figure out what codename he'll use in twenty minutes; too bad for him most of the good codenames already stand as claimed". |
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dconner
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
USA
104 Posts |
Posted - 06/07/2009 : 7:45:57 PM
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I think the accurate-but-boring explanation is that the 1950s, which would be the most obvious era for WWII-vet heroes to pop up, was in fact dominated by Civil War vets, in another genre, the Western.
While not, perhaps, "vigilantes" per se, Marvel did have some prominent WWII-veteran heroes. Nick Fury, Reed Richards, and Ben Grimm were all established as World War II veterans (though the timeline problems for the latter two became evident even in the '60s, and their wartime history was quietly retconned away.) |
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