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Tripwire Reviews George Pratt’s Enemy Ace: War Idyll Thirty-Five Years On

Published

1 year ago

May 23, 2025

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Under The Shadow Of Two Wars

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes a look at DC’s Enemy Ace: War Idyll written and drawn by George Pratt, celebrating its 35th anniversary this year…

Enemy Ace: War Idyll
Writer/ artist: George Pratt
DC Comics

First published back in 1990 in both hardcover and then paperback, George Pratt’s Enemy Ace: War Idyll was a powerful, emotional look at war. Hans vons Hammer, formerly Germany’s flying ace in the First World War, is visited by an American journalist Edward Mannock at his sanitarium in Fuhr, an island off the coast of Germany in 1969. Mannock is apparently researching a project he is writing but the truth is something far deeper. The reporter is a fellow war veteran, this time the Vietnam War, which is still very much an active conflict and he is searching for the meaning behind conflicts. So he thought that the former German pilot could offer him some sort of insight into this. Despite the decades between them and the fact that, at first glance, both conflicts seem very different, as time passes, both men realise that they have more in common than they first realise.

Enemy Ace, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, was always a far more nuanced and subtle character than any of his other DC war contemporaries as it portrayed a pilot who took no relish in what he did for his country and War Idyll takes this a step further, giving us a man who is broken by battle and haunted by his actions, Von Hammer is looking for a way out of his current predicament. Pratt’s art is at turns eerie and affecting while the story engages with readers, offering a portrayal of war which is unsanitised and stripped of all of its romanticism. There is an elegant kineticism to his art here too, with dogfights coming to life on the page. Joe Kubert’s introduction puts the book in sharp context, and as Enemy Ace’s co-creator with writer Bob Kanigher, this shows that Kubert saw a kindred creative spirit in Pratt.

Enemy Ace: War Idyll is an elegant. melancholy and powerful story of two men and how war can scar and change people for life. It’s as persuasive and understated as it was when it was first published thirty-five years ago. Both formats are still available online and it is well worth checking out for fans of war comics, art and still a great exemplar of just how versatile the comics format continues to be.