Days of Wrath

by Wayne Vansant

Award winning comic writer/artist Wayne Vansant brings his gripping World War II saga of war in the Pacific to Guadalcanal and the Battle of Bloody Ridge.

This is the powerful story of the long, vicious battle for Guadalcanal that occurred in 1942-43. When the U.S. Navy orders its outnumbered and outgunned ships to run from the Japanese fleet, they abandon American troops on a bloody, battered island in the South Pacific. As the men left on Guadalcanal find out that there will be no prisoners taken on either side, it is a kill or be killed battlefield as the stranded U.S. Marines fight against overwhelming odds and hope for reinforcements before it’s too late. As the events unfold, a U.S. Marine unit is deployed onto a small grassy hill to hold off the onslaught of Japanese assault troops. The three day-three night battle that ensues will go down in history as the Battle of Bloody Ridge.

Genres: Graphic Novels

115 pages, Paperback

First published February 29, 2012

About the author

I was born and raised near Atlanta, GA, and served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. I graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1975 and have had many jobs, including being a salesman, security guard, milk delivery man, and the Director of Security for a large art museum.

I began my writing and illustration career in 1986 with Marvel Comics' "Savage Tales" and "The 'Nam." Since then I have written and/or illustrated many books and comics on historical/military subjects such as Battle Group Peiper, Days of Darkness, Antietam: The Fiery Trial (commissioned by the National Park Service), Blockade: The Civil War at Sea, The War in Korea, The Hammer and the Anvil (profiling Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass), Normandy (profiling D-Day and the entire Normandy Campaign), Gettysburg (profiling the Battle of Gettysburg), and many others.

I am currently working on graphic histories of the Battle of the Bulge, Manfred von Richthofen, aka the Red Baron, and and am finishing up my Russian Front trilogy entitled Katusha: Girl Soldier of the Patriotic War, which is currently available as an eBook on Comics Plus, a leading comics book app.

Reviews

[Liewen]

It's been a long time since I'd last read an old school war comic book (I guess the last time was when I read some Buck Danny as a teenager). It was good enough, with a clean oldschool drawing and a bit more introspection than what I expected, even if it had its classic GI-Joe-like characters. The best was, I don't know that much about the Pacific War, just some battles/dates and a few random facts, and this comics made me look for more information about Guadalcanal, especially from the Japanese point of view.
3,5 stars, and I'll definitely read more by this author, who seems to have specialised in WW2 comics.