« May the man who has his finger on the button have a lovely day today / Hope nothing hangs him up or ticks him off or bums him out in any way / Lord, help him keep his cool cause he could pull the final curtain on my play / May the man who has his finger on the button have a lovely day today. » — Larry Wilkerson (as warbled by Bobby Bare)
The idea for this post came to me a couple of days ago, and this afternoon, while cobbling together the visual components, it dawned on me that today’s Memorial Day (Remembrance Day for Canadians, and ‘Victory Day‘ for those afflicted with brain worms and/or syphillis), and therefore quite à propos.
DC’s The Day After Doomsday series first turned up — of all places — in the pages of The Witching Hour, a page and a half bit of filler fluff by Len Wein and Jack Sparling. It must have struck a chord, if not with readers, then with its creators, for the feature stubbornly kept a-rising from its post-apocalyptic grave.
In spite of its episodic and arguably slight nature, TDBD enjoyed surprising longevity. It truly found its home in the Joe Orlando-edited Weird War Tales (1971-1983, DC’s gateway title for war fans into ‘horror’ and vice versa), where most of its dispatches saw print. You never know what’s going to catch on with the unwashed masses.
A most humble beginning for a series, this brief scene appeared in The Witching Hour no. 9 (June/July 1970, DC). Script by Wein, art by Jack Sparling (1916-1997). Dick Giordano, editor.
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Humour rears its homely head in the concurrently appearing second instalment — too close to call! — this one from House of Secrets no. 86 (June/July 1970, DC). Same creative team.
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My candidate for the series’ finest hour, this episode elegantly riffs both on the Vietnam War Draft and on Fredric Brown‘s classic 1948 short-short ‘Knock‘, wherein «The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door… » 4-F, incidentally, signifies « Registrant not acceptable for military service. To be eligible for Class 4-F, a registrant must have been found not qualified for service in the Armed Forces by an MEPS under the established physical, mental, or moral standards. » And let’s hear it for perennially under-appreciated artiste Bill Draut (1921-1993).
That issue had a splendid cover, and so here it is!
This is Weird War Tales no. 30 (Oct. 1974, DC); cover pencils and inks by Luis Domínguez, from a probable design by publisher Carmine Infantino.
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A scroogey teaming of WOT? favourites Steve Skeates and Alfredo Alcala, this turned up in Weird War Tales no. 35 (March 1975, DC). I’ll bet they had trouble deciding whether to run it in Plop! or WWT.
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Finally, this one appeared in Weird War Tales no. 48 (Sept./Oct. 1976, DC). Script by Skeates, art by Buddy Gernale.
Man, that last one is depressing as heck… The second one reminds me of an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (Season 2 or 3 opener, I believe): “Two,” with Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery. Besides being a solid episode, it always reminds me that chicken legs used to come in a can!
Yeah, a clear, cruel case of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. I admire the little details that Skeates threw in: making the protagonist a Boy Scout, his ingrained refusal to litter… an admirable feat of concision and concept. A lot of the Day After Doomsday vignettes are pretty trifling or formulaic — most frequently variations on ‘Time Enough at Last, speaking of TZ — but I thought it worthwhile to single out the exceptional ones. And I didn’t know that about chicken legs — yikes.
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Man, that last one is depressing as heck… The second one reminds me of an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (Season 2 or 3 opener, I believe): “Two,” with Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery. Besides being a solid episode, it always reminds me that chicken legs used to come in a can!
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Yeah, a clear, cruel case of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. I admire the little details that Skeates threw in: making the protagonist a Boy Scout, his ingrained refusal to litter… an admirable feat of concision and concept. A lot of the Day After Doomsday vignettes are pretty trifling or formulaic — most frequently variations on ‘Time Enough at Last, speaking of TZ — but I thought it worthwhile to single out the exceptional ones. And I didn’t know that about chicken legs — yikes.
Thanks for dropping us a line, Matt!
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