Two-Fisted Truth

Harvey Kurtzman and the birth of Cold War comics

A A A Comments (0) By Bob Callahan Thursday, Jan 2 2003

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Speaking about his accomplishment shortly before his death in 1993, Kurtzman suggested that it was the emphasis on realism which seemed to change everything. He was right, of course, and yet it was a realism of a kind, a period realism, which succeeded in turning everything on its head. The world of Harvey Kurtzman’s war stories is roughly the same world that can be found in early Jim Thompson novels or in the best films of blacklisted Hollywood film-noir directors of the time. It is interesting to note that the first of Kurtzman‘s Korean War stories was published the same year that Hollywood released films such as The Big Night, Detective Story, Strangers on a Train, The Racket and I Was a Communist for the FBI. The next year -- Kurtzman’s second and final year as the editor of both Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales -- Hollywood followed with dozens of others in the same vein, including Beware, My Lovely; Clash by Night; Kansas City Confidential; Scandal Sheet and The Turning Point.

In the name of this New Realism, a strange, queasy, post-atomic feeling rose up in this country, and began to seep through the pores of all of our popular arts. Throughout America, the true impact of the Cold War had arrived in all of its horror. Kurtzman brought these feelings with him to the comics. Certain old faiths may well have failed, but we have not yet banished these feelings, or this madness. As the desert floors of Iraq now open before us, they seem as bleak as any landscape we ever found in Korea; it is easy to see how Harvey Kurtzman‘s war stories still speak to us from the point of view of tomorrow.