In this review of Shellshock #1, we get 5 tales from the EC line about one of the most horrific things found in reality: war.
Shellshock #1
Writers: Al Feldstein, Tom Fowler, Benito Cereno, John Arcudi, Julio Anta, Michael Conrad
Artists: Tom Fowler, Albert Monteys, Shawn Martinbrough, David Lapham
Main Cover: Lee Bermejo
Variant Covers: Tyler Crook, Tom Fowler, Jay Stephens, Rian Hughes
Page Count: 56 pages
Release Date: August 19, 2026
This review contains spoilers
First up: “Scorched Earth”, which follows young soldier Rita Cruces during her short tour in Afghanistan. She’s nearing the end of her tour, and is standing at the burn pit, where she gets a horrific omen of what seems to be her own death. Fellow soldier Denny laughs off her worries, though, and helps keep her morale up during the next day’s mission.
The mission comes and goes without the worst coming to pass, and it’s soon Rita’s last day. Denny and the guys are still laughing over how much she was freaking out, and she teases Denny for borrowing her jacket for his imitation of her. But then he says something she’d heard in that omen…Right before they’re hit by mortar fire. Rita wakes up in the VA hospital later on, but Denny doesn’t survive.
Second story: “Christmas”, about the Christmas truce between the Allies and the Germans back in WWI. Our POV character details the Allies’ misgivings about it, but also tells about how he’ll give the German side the fruitcakes his sweetheart back home sent for him.
We see the night play out, with the heartwarming commonality the two opposing sides find…and then it’s revealed that the POV character laced those cakes with rat poison.
The third story found here is “Blowback”, wherein a CIA scientist has concocted another means of getting rid of Fidel Castro. But he’s called to a family barbecue and brings his current project—an explosive baseball—home with him.
At the cookout, he proceeds to get drunk, brag about his job, and neglects his son, telling him to just grab a toy from the car. And the kid just happens to find a baseball…
Fourth is “World of the Wars”, a documentary-style story about two warring cultures coming to an agreement to shift all of their armed conflicts to a neutral world to avoid any damage to civilians and property.
But here’s the thing…”neutral” doesn’t mean “unpopulated”, and we see the impact that these cultures’ wars have on the native, very human-looking denizens of their battlefield.
And finally, we’ve got “Yellow”, a reprint of a story from 1952, about a soldier set to be executed for his cowardice in battle. But his father, who happens to also be in the army and of a higher rank, concocts a plan.
He tells his son that the bullets the firing squad will be using are blanks, and that they’ll fake his death. With that in mind, he bravely faces the firing squad…only for it to turn out that those weren’t blanks at all.
This is certainly a chilling collection of stories, without needing much in the way of the supernatural. The two most fantastic elements to be found are with Rita seeing a flaming skeleton talking to her (which is essentially explained as hallucinations from burn pit fumes), and the alien races at war with each other (but even then, it’s done in a very down-to-earth fashion).
The horror in these stories comes entirely from what humans are capable of doing to each other when pushed into an armed conflict. The story that nails that theme the hardest is definitely “World of the Wars”, so I’ll go into that one first.
As stated before, this story’s told in a sort of documentary/historical text format. And it’s clearly written by someone of one of the two warring cultures, painting the Sepulcre of Peace as an objectively good thing.
The visuals, in all their stunningly disturbing glory, belie the text. In the actual images, we see the utterly terrified human (or humanoids, assuming it’s not Earth they’d chosen), fleeing for their lives, trying (and often failing) to avoid becoming casualties.
But the real punch is at the end: these warring cultures wish to spread their idea of peace throughout the galaxy. But if how they treat the native species of their “neutral battleground” is any indication, their idea of “peace” looks a lot more like “genocide”.
The visuals for this story are well-rendered, showing in beautiful detail just how this neutral world’s entire way of life is utterly ruined by a conflict they had nothing to do with.
The first story, coming back to the start, does a great job of preparing the reader for what they’re in for with this anthology. It’s a simple enough story of a young woman seemingly looking her own death in the face.
One of the highlights of this one is how the friendship between Denny and Rita is written. It’s clear that they’re close. Sure, he dismisses her fears, but he’s also successfully getting her to laugh and not dwell on the concept of her impending death, which…let’s face it, is going to be a constant in a war zone.
That friendship is what makes the eventual death omen payoff so devastating to witness.
The “Christmas” story is pretty great, I think. For most of it, it’s the heartwarming tale some people point to with notable events of World War I. There’s already that underlying horror of them having this one night of revelry together only to go back to murdering one another the next day.
But then comes the reveal that those cakes were poisoned, even after it’s noted that the German troops already look exhausted and like death warmed over. The POV character’s not sure if it’d kill them or just make them too sick to fight effectively, but does hope to spare them a worse death.
The setup followed by that payoff is extremely well done, and I really enjoy the color work for this one. The colors aren’t super-saturated, and one can really feel how beaten down the Allies are feeling, as well, though the more obvious toll is shown on the faces of the Germans.
The doctor in “Blowback” is definitely rather negligent as a person. Between giving his son the brush-off (to his own eventual detriment) and spilling government secrets to impress some cops after a few beers…It seems like the only thing he’s diligent about is dreaming up ways to get rid of America’s enemies.
Also, appreciate this story bringing up how the CIA would sometimes come up with novel ways of dealing out death…exploding baseball, umbrella-gun…In one panel, in the lab, there’s someone in the background holding a fish. No way would that fish be in the panel without someone figuring out how to use it to kill.
This story’s another instance of a great build-up with one hell of a payoff. And if he’d paid way more attention to his son, and his drinking, Dr. Davis probably wouldn’t have been killed by his own work. Love how that expression of horror is still on his face as his head’s blown off.
Finally, we come to “Yellow”. Now, this story, I was extremely eager to read. It was initially published in the EC title “Shiver SuspenStories”, and had even been used as the basis for a “Tales From The Crypt” episode. So, I was looking forward to being able to experience a vintage EC story.
I love the color work for it, and since it’s mentioned that the colors were restored, they look primarily like they would have back in 1952. And the concept of the story still holds up: a father doing what he can to not be disappointed in his son, pretty much.
Did he lie about the blanks for his son’s sake or for his own? Or both? I’m pretty sure it’s both. Though I will say that some of the dialogue ages it a teensy bit, (adding the word “sob” in the speech bubbles instead of as a sound effect, mostly), the whole thing still holds up well.
Final Thoughts
EC’s Shellshock #1 is probably one of the best assemblages of comics about one of the most horrific things known to man I’ve read. Every story is done well, all of them drive home the fact that war is horrific in their own way.
