murmansk

My fa­ther used to com­plain about “Hollywood’s ver­sion of war.”

And he also used to com­plain about fun­ny books – which is what com­ic books were called back when the most pop­u­lar ti­tles were not about su­per­heroes but fun­ny char­ac­ters: Don­ald Duck, Bull­win­kle, Lit­tle Lulu, Richie Rich, Bob Hope, Jer­ry Lewis, Pink Pan­ther, Casper, and all the Archie titles.

Well, to­day, Archie is a bit MOR se­ri­ous.

And comics have caught up to what they once were be­fore the Comics Code ex­ist­ed. Comics, such as EC, were viewed as caus­ing ‘ju­ve­nile delin­quen­cy’ and many were wiped out in the 1950s in fa­vor of MOR whole­some en­ter­tain­ment. EC’s only sur­viv­ing ti­tle – MAD – was moved to a mag­a­zine for­mat, since that didn’t fall un­der Comics Code Au­thor­i­ty approval.

And buried in one of EC’s orig­i­nal comics – TWO-FIST­ED TALES No. 21 May-June 1951 – is a pret­ty ac­cu­rate ac­count of a ship plow­ing thru the dead­ly Mur­man­sk Run.

Mur­man­sk con­sist­ed of Mer­chant Ma­rine con­voys de­liv­er­ing sup­plies to the So­vi­et Union – be­gun as part of Lend/Lease be­fore the US was in the war – while dodg­ing Ger­man sub­marines. It was a math game: How many sup­plies can get through while the per­cent­age sunk was viewed as ac­cept­able losses.

Stop­ping for ca­su­al­ties af­ter a ship went down was a waste of time and sim­ply didn’t hap­pen. And all it took was one torpedo.

My dad was there. And he ac­tu­al­ly knew how to dodge tor­pe­does, though his take was that he was sur­prised he was ever able to pull it off the few times he had to do so.

The melo­dra­mat­ic sto­ry be­low – writ­ten by EC leg­end Har­vey Kurtz­man and il­lus­trat­ed by oth­er leg­end Wal­ly Wood – synced with a bunch of the tales dad even­tu­al­ly told me, in­clud­ing tough sailors to­tal­ly los­ing it. He was qui­et most of his life, but af­ter the Mer­chant Marines got vet­er­ans sta­tus in 1988, he re­al­ly opened up. Tho I’d heard about the pota­to thing most of my childhood.

Lat­er in the war, my dad helped put out a fire start­ed by a Navy of­fi­cer who loved to chuck his used cig­a­rettes into the hold. In this case, they were car­ry­ing high test avi­a­tion gaso­line, just like the S.S. Bunker Hill below.

The Navy of­fi­cer even­tu­al­ly claimed cred­it for putting out the fire. My dad fig­ured that out while go­ing through de­clas­si­fied pa­pers some­time around 2003.

In the 1990s, dad was award­ed a medal from Rus­sia for his part in Mur­man­sk. That meant a lot to him.

 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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