Two-Fisted Tales #24
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join free"Hill 203!" is a harrowing wartime tale from EC’s Two-Fisted Tales #24, a 1951 10-cent comic that captures the psychological toll of combat with stark realism. Written by Harvey Kurtzman and illustrated with intense precision by Wally Wood—whose inks bring every shadow and strain to life—the story follows Valentine, a soldier left behind after a devastating ambush, as he struggles to reclaim his mind after being rescued from a ruined Korean village. The cover, a powerful piece by Kurtzman himself, sets the tone with a grim, unflinching gaze into the aftermath of war.
On Hill 203 in March 1951, a small group of U.N. soldiers—Macswain, Duke, Yodanza, and George—hold the line against a relentless North Korean advance, their only defense a single air-cooled 50-caliber machine gun. As the enemy closes in, each man falls in turn, but the gun keeps firing, a final testament to their stand.
In "Bug Out!", a lone U.S. soldier named Valentine survives a devastating ambush during the Korean War, only to spiral into psychological turmoil after the horror of combat. Waking in a hospital in a bombed-out Korean village, he becomes trapped in a haunting loop of memories, reliving the chaos and loss that shattered his mind. As the line between past and present blurs, Charlotte, a nurse tending to him, watches helplessly as he battles the ghosts of war.
In "Weak Link!" from Two-Fisted Tales #24, American soldiers including Lieutenant Stonzek, Sergeant, Jonesy, Swenson, and Pringle are sent to ambush German Tiger tanks along a river road—only to realize too late that the enemy has turned their own tactics against them, using logs in the water to cross and setting a deadly trap. With the Nazis closing in and their position compromised, the men must face the brutal reality of war's shifting tides.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 18 grades ▾
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in EC Portfolio #6 (1977), Two-Fisted Tales #2 (1980), Les Meilleures Histoires de... #[4] (1984), Two-Fisted Tales #7 (1994), EC Archives: Two-Fisted Tales #2 (2007), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library #1 (2012), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library #10 (2014), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library #22 (2018), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library #26 (2019), Two-Fisted Tales #24
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.