One of the larger ironies in the comics field is that when it comes to proving comics to be more than a cartoony, juvenile medium, no one is more intelligently spoken for than Will Eisner. And yet, very few “serious” creators are more juvenile and cartoony. When I was unfamiliar with him and first saw his signature, I thought he was just some notable Disney animator.

Despite this, Eisner is still brave enough to take on the most volatile and sensitive topics for any artist: War. Last Day in Vietnam starts off novel enough, as Eisner quickly establishes his stylistic ground. Each story focuses on one individual character, who tells his tale directly to Eisner, as he serves for the impartial journalist point of view from which the reader sees (similar to a Harvey Pekar style, only the narrator isn’t the protagonist). The comics itself is colored like worn newsprint, and Eisner sans coloring in favor or half-tone pencil-like shading. But well into the title-short story, the novelty wears off; the color palette soon becomes bland, the montages soon become tedious, and the talking-straight-to-the-panel technique heightens Eisner’s characterization weaknesses. In “Hard Duty,” why would the soldier put on such a hard-ass act if he was perfectly willing to show the reporter his gentle, child-caring soul? Even if Eisner establishes something to say, he’s clueless as to what to do with his statement. The last panel in “A Dull Day in Korea” brings about a cringe (in ineptness, not in a searing statement on dehumanization) and the last page of “A Purple Heart For George” is squandered of any emotion.

Most artists like to put Eisner at the forefront of prominent artists working in America today. His The Spirit beat new aesthetic ideas into comics’ identity. After years of absence from the world at large (he made several tutorial comics in the army while also serving as a journalist—this is where most of Vietnam’s stories were gathered), he then burst back in 1978 with A Contract With God, the first book ever to use the term “graphic novel.” Later, he published several of his essays in the book Comics & Sequential Art, thus coining the term “sequential art” as the most articulate way to describe the artform. In the book, Eisner pioneered several concepts: the ability of the montage, the integration of words as images, and the need for comics to find intrinsic qualities to differentiate itself from other artforms. Everything Eisner said made perfect sense, but when he applied it to his work, he seemed like a slave to compulsion. He had to find some clever way to integrate “The Spirit” title into the opening splash page, he had to absolve panels lines—he had to do everything in his power to make comics books “sequential art.”

Eisner’s career has brought him to the point of martyrdom. He’s become an idol to all those in American comics, but in showing a different approach, he’s sacrificed work of any emotional significance. His works are examples of art—but not art itself. With his complex humanist insight (…), war may not be the most suitable topic for Eisner to cover. There seem to be more well suited tales for Eisner to tell…perhaps one about a suburban young male, and his temperamental relationship with his older, grumpy neighbor?

And that’s primarily why Last Day in Vietnam is a weightless and annoyingly whimsical tale. Eisner’s big chin, large eye, cartoony style may serve well for urban tales, primarily set during the Depression (Contract With God, Invisible People, A Life Force, et al., only the term “serve well” is debatable). But this is war—so brutal and philosophically inexplicable a concept, that it’s almost demanded that whoever tackles it must have some modicum of insight. And Eisner’s breezy humanist style, with its uneloquent and bluntly dialectic dialogue (apostrophe-in-place-of-letters in words, or the nuanced ability to end every sentence with an exclamation mark), isn’t exactly pretentious—it’s just a lazy and empty slice-of-war-life tale. It could be said that Eisner’s aesthetic is so firmly grounded in the ’30s/’40s newspaper entertainment serials, but is that an excuse? Joe Kubert transcended his earlier hedonistic Sgt. Rock comics when he made Fax from Sarajevo, a passionate, if not prosy and futile, indictment of war. But at least it was saying something. Eisner doesn’t transcend his past themes, he condescends them. All he seems to be thematically saying “Hyuck!”