The 'Nam Vol. 1

Written by Doug Murray
Art by Michael Golden, Wayne Vansant, Armando Gil, Pepe Moreno, John Beatty, and Bob McLeod

My experience of The 'Nam has been limited, until I read an older Marvel trade a few years ago, and realised that I'd missed out on a terrific comic in my early-teen fixation on superhero comics.

The 'Nam, the first ten issues of which are collected here, was an attempt to explore, within the boundaries of the Comics Code, a realistic view of the Vietnam War.  The stories were designed to play out in 'real time', so that one issue of the comic took place one month before the next one, and characters who survived got 'short' and went home at the end of a year.

The writing, by Doug Murray, a veteran, captured a number of aspects of the war that weren't usually seen in comics, from the graft of Top, a corrupt First Sergeant, to the random and unexpected violence of the war.  The book did not shy away from massacred villagers, or the lives of the VC (portrayed in one memorable issue in which a Kit Carson ex-VC shares his story).  Some issues end abruptly, or are hard to follow, but that helps add to the war's atmosphere.

The art for most of this book is by Michael Golden (the VC issue is by Wayne Vansant).  Golden has been a favourite artist of mine since I read his early Micronauts books as a kid, although the style he employs here is much more cartoonish than his usual work.  This volume has been retouched, so the colours are brighter, and in some places, downright bizarre.

This comic is an interesting contrast to the Vietnam Journal book I read last week, which was both darker and denser, but also was not constrained by the Code.  Together, the two books help construct a fuller picture of the War.  Now I need to get Volume Two, and hope that Marvel will continue to republish the rest of this series.