War Report #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeWar Report #5 (May 1953) holds a unique footnote in Golden Age war-comics history as the final issue of Ajax-Farrell's short-lived Korean War anthology — and, more significantly, its lead story about a military chaplain crossing the line into armed combat was singled out and reprinted in Geoffrey Wagner's Parade of Pleasure (1954–55), a British critique of American popular culture that served as a transatlantic companion volume to Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent. That citation makes this otherwise obscure issue a primary artifact in the broader moral panic over comic-book content that reshaped the entire industry by 1954. As the concluding chapter of a five-issue run that launched in September 1952 — right as the Korean War was producing the first wave of dedicated combat anthologies — it also documents how small independent publishers rushed Korea-themed material to newsstands alongside the better-remembered EC and DC war titles.
War Report #5 is an anthology of war stories featuring multiple tales. "Get That Man!" depicts Lieutenant Skip Sanders and Sergeant Tom Dean leading soldiers in a battlefield operation, with Sanders pursuing enemy forces across dangerous terrain while coordinating with his men under fire. Another story involves a spy named Bob Sloan working with underground resistance members and communists to sabotage enemy operations, including a plan to eliminate an enemy commander. The issue also contains combat sequences featuring soldiers engaging guerrillas and bandits, with characters like Tim coordinating tactical operations via radio while under enemy fire from snipers and other hostile forces.
A mysterious weapon—sleek, deadly, and impossibly fast—has been downing American bombers over Korea, and no one can figure out what it is. Captain Alan Prince gets the impossible assignment: capture one of these strange craft and bring it back alive. As Prince pursues the deadly device through the night sky, he begins to understand how it hunts—but understanding the enemy and surviving long enough to complete his mission are two very different things.
Lieutenant Skip Sanders and Sergeant Tom Dean are sent on a dangerous patrol with orders to capture a prisoner suspected of carrying bubonic plague—intelligence the division hopes will prove the enemy's germ warfare claims. When they locate a Red dressing station and successfully extract a patient, their retreat turns into a desperate firefight as they fight to bring their quarry back across enemy lines. A tense mission of mercy becomes a race against both bullets and time.
When an American operative named Bob Sloan infiltrates a North Korean intelligence headquarters to join a South Korean underground resistance movement, he discovers they're planning to sabotage a critical enemy ammunition dump—but a communist double agent has already compromised the mission. Sloan must use his wits and nerve to turn the tables, expose the traitor, and find a way to complete the operation before the Reds silence him for good.
Signal Corps soldier Tim Dolan discovers three of his comrades hanging from poles at the hands of guerrillas, and when a sniper's bullet nearly kills him while he cuts them down, he and a young soldier find themselves pinned in a ditch facing overwhelming enemy forces. With only a field radio and their rifles between them and annihilation, Tim calls in reinforcements—tanks and half-tracks close in to trap the raiders—but the cost of survival proves steeper than victory itself.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 17 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 ▸History
War Report was produced under the Ajax-Farrell banner, with Excellent Publications Inc. listed as the indicia publisher — one of multiple imprints Robert W. Farrell operated after relaunching his comic-book operation in 1951 with Excellent Publications' financial backing. Like most Farrell war material, the series relied on uncredited anthology contributors rather than the marquee talent (Matt Baker, L. B. Cole, Steve Ditko) associated with the company's horror line. The run lasted exactly five issues over eight months, from September 1952 to May 1953, suggesting it was cancelled as Korean War combat stories peaked commercially just before the armistice.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Ajax-Farrell (indicia: Excellent Publications Inc.), cover-dated May 1953.
- Issue #5 is the final issue in the series; the complete run spans exactly 5 issues, September 1952–May 1953.
- 32 pages, full color; confirmed story titles: 'Cross of Courage,' 'Swamp Mission,' 'Operations...Report!,' 'The Tank Trappers,' and 'Spitting Death: A Saga of the U.S. .45.'
- The lead story — depicting a chaplain taking up arms in combat — was reproduced in Geoffrey Wagner's Parade of Pleasure (1954/55), a British anti-comics critique analogous to Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, making this one of very few Golden Age war comics directly cited in the period's moral-panic literature.
- No individual writer or artist credits for issue #5 have been documented across available sources; all credits are listed as 'Various.'
- Robert W. Farrell relaunched his publishing operation in 1951 under Excellent Publications' backing, operating multiple imprints including Ajax and Ajax-Farrell; War Report appeared during this second phase of the company.
- The Farrell war line is broadly noted by collectors as scarce in higher grades, with even lower-numbered issues in the run rarely surfacing at auction.
- No character first appearances, known reprints (beyond the Wagner citation), or media adaptations have been documented for this issue.
Reprints
Reprinted in Battle Stations #7 (1959)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.