Death Stand and Other Stories

Death Stand and Other Stories by Jack Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Death Stand contains 34 war comics illustrated by Jack Davis.

War comics aren't normally my thing but Jack Davis is in my top four EC comics artists so I gave this a shot. For the record, the other three in the top four are Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, and Bernie Krigstein.

Most of the stories in this collection are plotted by Harvey Kurtzman, although Davis takes the writing reins a few times. The stories fit into Kurtzman's anti-war war story category nicely. I was hooked from the first story, Colt Single Action Army Revolver, the tale of a gun passing from man to man. There are a few western stories, some set in the Civil War, some in WWII, and some set in Korea. There's even an excerpt from Last of the Mohicans.

Jack Davis' art in this volume is something to behold. The man knows his way around a rotting corpse but his war art is on a whole other level. Some of the panels look like they could be museum pieces, absurdly loaded with detail. The heavy use of blacks makes me wonder why anyone would soil these pages with color. They're perfect in stark black and white.

War comics still aren't my thing but the art in this collection is exquisite. Four out of five bullet riddled corpses.

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