Book Review: The Bluecoats: Navy Blues
In the 1970s, a French obsession with the American West turned to the East and the American Civil War. Mixing history, humor, and a now quaint cynicism towards the absurdity of war, The Bluecoats tells the tale of frontier cavalrymen turned regulars across 67 and counting volumes and even classic strategy games. Cinebook has been translating the classic comic into English, with 18 of writer Raoul Cauvin’s and artist Willy Lambil’s tales currently available.
The Story
As befitting a comic that creates comparisons to Beetle Bailey and Asterix & Obelix, half the book is gag and contrivance, bouncing Chesterfield and Blutch from one branch of the army to the next, failing out of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, until they fall as far as any soldier can go:
They end up in the Navy.
The gags are rather innocent and bloodless, a sort of Looney Tunes meets Beetle Bailey innocent good humor that plays on dumb officer stereotypes with a real 20th Century Sunday Comics feel here.
And then, a shadow moves across the waves in pursuit…
It is the Merrimack, the Confederate ironclad. An unsinkable ship that claims three of the Bluecoats’. And then Sergeant Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch get assigned to the USS Monitor.
At this point, the goofy gags get shelved for the historical sea battle. Chesterfield and Blutch drift through the ship on their duties, allowing the reader to see the events and decisions made on the USS Monitor that day. These are played straight, with an admittedly Union-centered view, and the heroics of the real men unmarred by silliness. It is only after the two ships slink away from their stalemate that the humor returns.
The Characters
The Bluecoats are Sergeant Cornelius M. Chesterfield, a squared away NCO trying to do his best, and Corporal Blutch, who will do anything to survive the Civil War.
Blutch is hard to handle as he is not a coward or a sad sack or even a shamming E-4, so he doesn’t fit into the approved categories of military goofball. While Blutch looks out for himself, there isn’t that menace to others that one expects of an opportunist in uniform. That said, he’d still get a lock and sock party in most units today. Strangely, there’s no risk of desertion here, but Blutch is not opposed to playing dead right before the cavalry charges. And, as a result, Sergeant Chesterfield is quick to anger and quicker to resort to “hands-on correction”.
The historical officers are treated with a gravitas expected from later Civil War movies such as Gettysburg. The humor in the series dies down when it is time for the historical speeches and the historical decisions.
As for the ahistorical officers, Chesterfield and Blutch must serve under, the old saw about the only brains in the cavalry are in the horses’ heads is not going to die any time soon.
The World
The world is generally consistent with Civil War America, if seen through the design of classic Sunday Comics.
Politics
While a historical comic, Navy Blues is focused on the battlefields and bravery of the Civil War and not the mire of causes or who was right. Instead, the absurdity of war comes through, although in a defanged Sunday-morning comic version instead of the bitter veterans’ accounts of today. Think Beetle Bailey, and not Terminal Lance.
Content Warning
The battles outside of the Monitor vs. Merrimack may be cartoonish and sanitary, but the history portrayed is not. Other volumes deal with the horrors of the prisons, draft riots, and other terrors of the Civil War.
Who is it for?
History buffs, comic buffs, and for getting stories of America that we no longer talk about in our media.
Oh man. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It sits at a few of my intersections.
I was growing up in the US (New Jersey) but I spent a year in Paris when I was a kid in the mid 70's (my dad was a college professor and would take long sabbaticals to write, and thus I turned from 8 to 9 in Paris). While there, I feel in love with Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke and others (all in French) and the Bluecoats definitely stirred a memory in me. When we returned to the States, I started to replace what I could, so I have many Asterix and Tintins but it would be great to get some Bluecoats as well. Thanks :)