by Jason Aaron and Cameron Stewart
DC/Vertigo

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Superman and Batman and the rest of the cape-clad heroes shared newsstand space with “Sgt. Rock,” “Two-Fisted Tales” and other war comics. Blame it on World War II and the Korean War, or maybe just our culture’s general interest in warfare, but once upon a time, war comics were in vogue. But the Cold War’s lack of action and the political and moral ambiguities of Vietnam effectively killed the genre. Now, amid another politically and morally ambiguous conflict, war comics are making a modest comeback.

One of the best of this new crop is Jason Aaron and Cameron Stewart’s “The Other Side,” a five-issue mini-series published by DC/Vertigo. It’s a war comic that’s not a war comic. The actual, physical battles are few and far between, with the real fights occurring inside the minds of the two main characters, an American Army private and a young Viet Cong volunteer, both of whom are trying to divine the reasons they were sent into battle.

Even the most familiar genre trappings are missing. There are no touching moments between platoon members, no good-natured teasing or friendships formed under fire in “The Other Side.” The members of PFC Everette’s platoon only bother to save one another from enemy fire because it’s their job; otherwise, they’d just be sweating in the jungle and chasing away mosquitoes. Everette, a farm boy raised in Alabama, is just as scared of his fellow soldiers—mostly African-Americans—as he is of the Viet Cong. It also doesn’t help that Everette sees visions of bloody, rotting corpses everywhere he goes, or that he can hear his gun singing and whispering to him. All Everette can do is stare at the carnage around him, mouth agape, and try to process it without going insane. He’s far from a hero, and anyone coming to “The Other Side” looking for a muscle-bound, hard-ass protagonist will be sorely disappointed. In issue four, Everette tries to stop a firefight because he sees a butterfly caught in the middle of all the bullets. The platoon sergeant gets up to yank Everette down, but ends up taking a bullet in the throat. The butterfly, however, escapes unscathed.

Everette’s counterpart in the war is Vo Dai, a Vietnamese farm boy who volunteers to fight so as to preserve the honor of his family. Vo Dai is also plagued by visions, but his are of mythical beasts and dead family members. And while Everette is dodging bullets and blundering through the war, Vo Dai is marching hundreds of miles to Khe Sanh. During the journey, dozens of other men in his regiment succumb to exhaustion and starvation, and Vo Dai contracts malaria before he meets up with his comrades on the frontline. Two-fisted combat this is not.

However, Aaron isn’t writing a simple anti-war comic. Everette is clueless about the war, unsure about who’s fighting for what and too preoccupied with his own psychological traumas to care. But Vo Dai knows exactly why he’s fighting, and Aaron doesn’t skimp here. Vo Dai isn’t a Communist ideologue or some naïve young man duped by propaganda. As the story progresses, Vo Dai’s illusions of Communism are shattered, but his duty to family and tradition are reinforced.

Aaron is something of a rising star at Vertigo; as his work on “The Other Side” is winding down, he’s begun writing a new series called “Scalped,” a neo-noir set on a Native American reservation in South Dakota. “Scalped” stays true to the conventions of its genre more than “The Other Side,” but Aaron’s knack for creating believable, multi-layered characters with often contradictory motivations shines through in both.

And while Aaron gives readers plenty to think about, artist Cameron Stewart gives them much more to look at. The scenes in the jungles of Vietnam or the underground tunnels occupied by the Viet Cong are dark, grimy and full of shadows. His penciling is clean and dynamic. Bullets almost fly off the page during combat scenes, and Everette and Vo Dai’s dreams and hallucinations are rendered in a gory, hellish intensity. Colorist Dave McCaig gives Stewart’s artwork a kind of washed-out, hazy look that’s subtle and impressive.

There’s still one more issue of “The Other Side” slated to hit comic stores in February, and, if Vertigo has any sense, a trade paperback collection of the series will soon follow. With the war in Iraq escalating and the specter of other wars looming on the horizon, we may be seeing more war comics—and war movies and war books, not to mention actual war footage—than we’d care for. If we’re lucky, a scant few might be as good as “The Other Side.”