I had the First Comic trades that they colored, so reading the series in black and white has always felt strange for me.

Marvel Graphic Novel # 29(1989):
Hulk and Thing in 'The Big Change', by Jim Starlin and Berni Wrightson.

Instead of one of their usual slugfests, 'Rockman' and 'Greenskin' are teleported to an alien planet for...reasons...in this tale that is played for laughs, and, mostly, succeeds.
It has echoes of 'Star Trek', 'Hitchhiker's Guide', and mainly the 'Bwa Ha Ha' Justice League(think of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold changing colors). It even has a cameo by that 'What If' guy...Uatu who I mean.

Jim Starlin did a Hulk/Thing (with Dr. Strange too) story for Marvel Fanfare 20-21 a couple years earlier which has a similar tone to The Big Change. Jim Starlin does the art with Al Milgrom on inks. Not sure if the two projects were related, or supposed to come out closer together. Maybe Wrightson took longer to finish the art on The Big Change and they needed something to fill the slot for Marvel Fanfare. Could be Starlin just liked the characters!

That's a good point about the quality on the second part.  It's been a while since I read these issues, so I'm not sure if I ever picked up on that.  I just pulled out my actual issues to see if there was any clarification on who contributed what. There's nothing other than a comment from Milgrom in his "Editori-AL" feature for issue 20 where it says the story reunites Starlin with his old inking companion from the 70s.  That's an ambiguous statement which doesn't really say who's doing what exactly, and like you said, the actual credits are just everyone's names.     

Now that I've pulled these issues out I think I'll put them in my to-read pile before re-filing them.  My copy of The Big Change has conveniently been sitting close by too for the longest time, so I'll make a point to read all of 3 of these first chance I get.

I'm interested in getting to the New Defenders era as an X-Men fan out of curiosity to see what was done with Angel, Iceman, and Beast. Granted, in all my X-Men and X-Factor reading I can't say I recall many references to events from Defenders, but I probably wouldn't recognize it if I saw it. I've only read one or two random issues from that era before. I have read the whole 1980s Strange Tales run where Peter Gillis wrote the Doctor Strange feature and just found to be so-so. It seems DeMatteis leaves right when the new direction starts.

The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz by Will Franz and Sam Glanzman


What a long strange trip it's been to get this book.  Not just the collection, but the initial storyline was certainly unusual for the time and the publisher.  The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz first appeared in Fightin' Army #76, cover dated Oct. 1967 and published by Charlton Comics.  By late 1967, Charlton was very much the poverty row of comic book publishers and was certainly not known for continued features in its anthology comics, certainly not its war comics.  So Captain Schultz was an anomaly.  It was also different, in that it was written by Will Franz, who had not been writing comics long and was possibly still in his teens with no military experience.  Sam Glanzman, on the other hand, was an industry veteran and also a combat veteran, having served on a destroyer in the Pacific in World War II.  And, the feature was very much anti-war.  While that may have been the zeitgeist with much of the public in 1967 as the war in Vietnam drug on, it was very much not reflected in the vast majority of comics, particularly war comics.  This feature was, quite simply, unusual from snap to whistle.  And, over the years, that made it something of a legend.  But was it any good?  Not that many of us knew.  Because Charlton comics had notoriously bad distribution and were not, by and large, "collected" by funnybook collectors.  These were the kind of books that were passed around to friends, that were sold at yard sales, that were tossed in grandparents closets so that the grandkids had something to read when they were visiting.  Charltons can be found in some parts of the country...in others they are rare and hen's teeth. 

So it was a wonderful thing when the late Drew Ford teamed up with Sam Glanzman to reprint Glanzman's work.  And for a while it went very well.  And then Ford got in to financial trouble and the books took forever to be produced.  And then Ford passed away at a very young age, and it looked like a number of those books would never see the light of day.  But some good folks stepped forward and saved the projects that were in limbo.  And here we are. 

So was it worth the wait?  Yeah.  Is it an almost forgotten classic?  Not classic.  But certainly interesting and definitely worth reading.  Captain Willy Schultz is a U.S. Army officer in North Africa during World War II, who just happens to speak fluent native-sounding German.  He's falsely accused of murdering his superior officer, court martialed and sentenced to death.  He escapes and, ultimately ends up fighting as a German office for a while to survive.  He also develops a serious aversion to killing.  The series follows Schultz through the war as he floats back and forth between the two armies trying to avoid being executed as a murderer or as a spy.  

Franz was a capable writer, within the bounds of mid to late 1960s comic book writing.  He was extremely young and that shows through both as a help and a hindrance.  The book is clearly anti-war and though it's set in WWII, the aim is at Vietnam.  And, again, that was unusual in comics at the time, which certainly makes it interesting.  This was about a year before the famous "Make War No More" began showing up in Sgt. Rock.  Franz pulls out a lot of the standard war comic tropes and there are at least two love interests to many, but overall it's a decently written series that is at least more interesting than the majority of comics, certainly war comics, of the time period. 

The art, by Sam Glanzman, is generally beyond reproach.  If it isn't the equal of his work on U.S.S. Stevens...well...what is?  Glanzman was a pro and war comics were where he shined.  This is really no exception. 

So, was it worth the wait?  Yeah.  It was.  It's dated and you have to remember the historical context.  But, ultimately, it's a good and satisfying book and I'm glad it has finally seen the light of day. 


Note for the folks at CCF.  I know that most of you know a lot of this info, but I post these across platforms, so it's easier not to have to tailor them to just here.