March Answers From the Vault

Welcome back to another round of Answers From the Vault. Earlier this week I threw open the gates of inquiry and you, my loyal readers, flooded through, cramming my inbox with literally trillions of questions. Most of these I will answer in full through private correspondence, so keep sending me questions, but a select few I have decided to post here for the wider internet world to see so that all mankind may benefit from this exchange of knowledge. As always, previous questions and answers can be found here, here and here.

And now, on with the answerings.


So I just learned that the Haunted Tank's nemesis was Attila the Hun. What's up with that? -- Pat B.

Thanks for the question, Pat, it's a good one. For those of you at home who may not be familiar with the comic in question, the Haunted Tank was a feature that ran in DC's classic war anthology G. I. Combat from 1961 until the series was canceled in 1987. It followed the crew of a World War II tank which was haunted by the ghost of Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart, who stood watch over his namesake tank commander by issuing vague and mostly useless platitudes and cryptic prophecies.

But while the Haunted Tank was usually dealing with regular ol Nazis and whatnot, Pat is spot on, as their arch-enemy was none other than Attila the Hun. The reason is fairly simple as these things go: during World War I and to a lesser extend World War II, Germans were referred to as Huns in Allied slang. This was in (very small) part because of the historical link between the Germans and the tribes of the Hun, who way back in the day of Attila did speak some Germanic, but was mostly due to the Hun-like appearance of the German spiked helmets during WWI and Kaiser Wilhelm II's Boxer Rebellion speech comparing his army to the Huns while exhorting them to show no mercy in their dealings with the Chinese. From these things, Allied speakers, including most notably Winston Churchill, often called the German army "the Hun".

So if our boys could have a ghostly protector, then wouldn't it make sense for the Nazis to have their own ghostly avatar? And who better to watch over "the Hun" than the original Hun himself, Attila?

I'm guessing the logic was more apparent to audiences in the early 1960's than it is to today's readers.



Why were the Defenders the greatest super hero team of all time? -- Rob L.

Thanks for the insightful question, Rob. I should start by saying that I don't really agree with your central premise here, as I have to admit I've never been a fan of the Defenders. And I say this as someone who has probably read over a hundred issues of the original series, so I'm not just blowing smoke out my Hellstrom. The series just always seemed flat and uncompelling to me.

However, there are certainly a lot of people who have a soft spot for Defenders and who probably agree with you, so I'll answer the question from the assumption that you're correct.

The main reason the Defenders were the best super hero team ever was their basic premise: the non-team. This, of course, was dictated by the fact that the original members (Namor, Hulk, Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange) were all loners. There wasn't really any logical reason they should want to be in a team or work well in a team, so Marvel just said: okay, it's not a team. It's just a group of heroes that happens to help each other out on a monthly basis.

This flexibility was a perfect fit for the 70's and let the book really flow, as characters would leave, or join or not or whatever with basically no rhyme or reaspn to it. In other words, it was a writers playground, where you could pretty much just go nuts without having to fit your ideas into the more logical structures that titles like Avengers or Fantastic Four demanded. This allowed people like Steve Gerber and Doug Moench (who, as Pat B. correctly points out, didn't technically write Defenders even though the series has his stink all over it) to go crazy with weird ideas (Elf with a Gun, anyone?) crossovers (Guardians of the Galaxy?) and events (such as "Defender for a day," when over twenty Marvel heroes showed up to help on one case and ended up creating some of the most unlikely and chaotic team-ups ever).

Personally, I think this lack of structure played a little too much into the tendency of the time towards self-indulgent navel gazing and that a little more editorial structure could have made for better stories (plus the rotating cast too often was stuck with second stringers and obscure pet characters). But if there's any reason why Defenders can stake a claim to the title of best super hero team ever, this is it.



In your opinion, who are the three most powerful earth-born characters in comic book history? -- Rob L.

This is a classic fanboy type of question, Rob, which I heartily approve of. After all, if we can't debate whether Superman or Thor would win in a fight, what's the fun of comics? Although in that case there's not really any debate as the answer is obviously Thor.

Your question is a little trickier, though, mainly because of the Earth-born clause. That, of course, eliminates Superman and other cosmic powers such as Silver Surfer, but it also puts a few favorites on iffy ground. Thor, for example, was probably born on Earth since his mother is actually Gaea herself. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, wasn't born at all but was formed out of clay that the gods then animated, meaning she is made of Earth but not born on it.

Just to make things plain, then, I'm going to disqualify anybody who has questionable backgrounds like Thor and Wonder Woman. I'm also going to DQ people like Phoenix, since the Phoenix-force wasn't born on Earth even though her host form was; and pet character wankfests like the Sentry, who has been inflated to godlike powers as an on-page manifestation of Bendis's ego.

So who does that leave? Well, for my first choice I'm going to go with the original Captain Marvel from the folks at Fawcett, who was given the abilities of the pantheon but who isn't actually a god himself. Secondly, I'll give a shout out to the nerdy FF villain Molecule Man, whose powers were enough to rival The Beyonder at times.

The third one, though, is a bit of a puzzler. The most obvious choice would probably be Hulk, but he has certain weaknesses that I think render him a little too one-dimensional in terms of his powers, which makes sense considering he's the most one-dimensional comic character of all time. Likewise, Dr. Strange is usually overpowered, but is he more powerful than, say, Dr. Fate?

Anyway, at the risk of parsing continuity and going against my own self-imposed rules, I've decided to go ahead and give slot number three to the Silver Age Spectre. I have to specify Silver Age because DC's continuity is so messed up at this point that there's really no telling what version is appearing these days -- the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the post-CoIE, the Hal Jordan, the post-Infinite Crisis version... whatever, guys. Honestly. But while some of the newer versions have added layers of goofiness to the backstory that would otherwise disqualify Spectre from the competition (i.e. he's actually an angel cast out of Heaven or some other Evanescence-level goth nonsense), the traditional version was both born on and died on Earth.

So there's the answer: Captain Marvel, Molecule Man and Spectre. Three guys you probably don't want to mess with.

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Breaking the Fourth Wall: Episode 4

To review: Twelve years ago I sent in my pitch for an updated Haunted Tank story in which, a generation after World War II, General J. E. B. Stuart finds himself dealing with a new war and a new tank crew headed by an African-American tank commander. And though the pitch wasn’t picked up by Vertigo at the time, within the past year they did end up publishing a Haunted Tank series based on this premise. Only, I didn’t write it.

So, what was the story I sent in exactly? And how did it differ from what Vertigo ended up publishing? Today we’re going to take a look at how two writers working from the same idea can come up with completely different stories as I compare the details of my pitch with the actual published series written by Frank Marraffino.

[Note: before I go any further I want to reiterate that Vertigo and Marraffino in no way, shape or form “stole” my idea; we just happened to have the same idea at different times. I also want to say that though I have read the first three issues of Marraffino’s five issue series, I have been unable to locate copies of the final two issues, so on some points I will necessarily have to focus more on my own pitch due to incomplete information]

In general, the differences between our two stories fall into three major categories.

1. Setting

This is both the most obvious and the most important difference between our two stories, and in many ways the other differences can be seen to stem in large part from this. When I developed my pitch in 1997, the United States was not currently engaged in any widespread warfare; what military actions we were undertaken (or had recently undertaken) also weren’t really much for tank warfare. The only recent conflict with any widespread tank use was the Gulf War of 1991, but that war was so brief in terms of actual combat that it didn’t really seem like the proper setting. With these factors in mind (as well as some others I will discuss shortly) I decided to set my story in Vietnam.

Marraffino’s story, on the other hand, takes place during the war in Iraq. Echoing my thoughts on the Gulf War, he has chosen to set the story during the actual combat phase of the war, i.e. in 2003, rather than making the story contemporary to when it was coming out in 2008-9. I’m assuming at least that his reasons were similar, anyway – that is, this is the one section of the war where tanks were not only being used widely but also when actual, classic combat situations were taking place. Tank vs. tank or tank vs. soldier battles were happening rather than just a police action with tanks just tooling around as a show of force while they try to avoid land mines.

The effect that setting has on both stories is significant. There are some similarities, of course; the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are obvious and have been a talking point in discussion of Iraq since day one. In this sense, then, most of the benefits of setting the story in Vietnam are also shared by the setting in Iraq, while the modern setting has several additional benefits, which can pretty much all be summed up with the blanket statement that setting the story in Iraq makes the story more immediate and relevant to modern readers. People reading about Iraq are going to have a more visceral reaction to the material based on the immediacy of the action.

Of course, this also means there is some benefit to setting the story in Vietnam instead: namely, if you don’t want them to have such a reaction. Setting the story in Vietnam instead allows for a more studied take because it removes that immediacy from the equation for both the reader and the writer; people are going to take their preconceptions about the Iraq war into a reading that they probably aren’t going to have about Vietnam. With this in mind, I think that the Vietnam setting probably better suited the story I was planning to tell than an Iraq setting would; and likewise, Marraffino’s story seems to be better suited for Iraq (as we’ll see momentarily).

I’d call this difference a wash, then, except I think the modern setting gives the story a certain element of both relevance and legitimacy because of an assumed realism the story gains from being “ripped from the headlines”. So though I think the difference in setting is caused largely because of when we developed our respective pitches, I have to say I think the Iraq setting works better than the Vietnam setting.

2. Characters

One of the other effects setting has on the development of the story is the type of characters it suggests. In the previous section I mentioned that the Vietnam era was more suited to my story, and one of the main reasons is because of what it allowed me to do with my African-American tank commander, Jeb Stuart Gray.

In my story, Jeb Gray was the son of the original Haunted Tank’s black member, Gus Gray, and was named for both the original tank commander Jeb Stuart and their protective ghost. By setting the story in the Vietnam era, it allowed me to craft a complex character who was of a piece with that turbulent political time. I wrote Jeb Gray as an intellectual, a deep thinker who was involved in the nascent black power movement and had become deeply distrustful of the government and what “the man” was selling at the time. Yet, he had been raised to believe in America and that service to the nation was both an honor and a duty. So at the start of our story, he is deeply conflicted, having left put his college education and his political and social beliefs on hold in order to fight in a war he doesn’t believe in for a government he doesn’t believe in.

Likewise, my treatment of General J. E. B. Stuart was influenced in large part through the Vietnam setting. One of the main focuses for General Stuart was the nature of the war itself. The Civil War was a war where both sides passionately believed in the righteousness of their cause, and so for Stuart the details of World War II might have been surprising but the ethos was not. It was another “good war”, one where people believed in what they were fighting for. It was recognizable, honorable. By putting him in Vietnam, then, I wanted the General to be faced not just with a tank commander who challenged his belief system, but with a war that itself inherently challenged his beliefs. So while the two would initially be faced with the obvious black/white conflict, the underlying issue of the war itself – and how it undermines their faith in, well, everything – would eventually become a common ground.

Marraffino’s take is in most ways very different, and again much of this is either caused by or reflective of his choice of settings. His black tank commander, Jamal Stuart, isn’t an intellectual, even an angry one; nor are any of his crew worried too much about philosophical issues. Even though it’s set in 2003, it’s essentially a “post-racial” crew for lack of a better term. Jamal isn’t going to be brooding about civil rights or political injustices; he’s going to be killing bad guys and telling the general to take his outdated racism and jam it up his ass.

Likewise, his General Stuart is not really the type of guy to be worrying too much about the difference in the military ethos between, say, Antietam and Tikrit. He’s really more interested in seeing some action – getting out there and kicking some tail. A major difference between the Stuart of my story and the Stuart portrayed by Marraffino can be seen in their respective ghostly backstories (and here I am taking some details from online reports of the last two issues of Marraffino’s series). In Marraffino’s series, Stuart claims to have become a ghost as the result of a curse dooming him to watch over his ancestors, but we later learn that this is just an excuse for Stuart to pursue his love of adventure and battle.

Some readers have criticized Marraffino for his portrayal of Stuart, specifically his historical details regarding Stuart’s ownership of slaves, but in this case I think Marraffino ‘s take is a pretty good one. Stuart was an adventurer and was known for his exploits; he craved action and the resulting adoration. I think it’s a perfectly valid reading of the character.

It’s not what I was going to do with my Stuart, however. In Haunted Tank #2, Marraffino has Stuart relate the famous incident at Gettysburg where he left Lee’s army blind while he chased glory on a useless excursion with his mounted troops. Lee tells Stuart that “there is a lesson to be learned here”. But it’s clear from his actions in Marraffino’s series that Stuart didn’t actually learn his lesson. In my story, on the other hand, this same event is the key to Stuart’s backstory; essentially, because of this action and the fact that it (arguably) doomed the Confederacy to defeat, Stuart is cursed, becoming a ghost doomed to wander the afterlife until he makes amends for his mistake. My Stuart was someone who was chastened, who had learned his lesson; no longer a thrill seeker or an adventurer, he was a cautious and thoughtful spirit who was earnestly trying to make up for the wrong he had done at Gettysburg.

Again, in terms of the characters, I have to say that Marraffino’s choices lend themselves to a more modern take on the story; at one point the members of the tank engage in, well, a rap battle with the General. Their seeming superficiality appears to be intentional on Marraffino’s part, a comment on the superficiality of our culture in a way; these characters don’t get into deep moral discussions of racism with the General in part because they don’t think of race the same way, but also because they aren’t really capable of that kind of thought to begin with. That’s not to say the issues don’t come up, they are just dealt with differently (for example, there’s a nice sequence where Jamal tries to tell the General why he shouldn’t use the n-word anymore and is completely undermined by his tank crew rapping behind him). While I had a story where the characters were self-aware and thus discussed their differences and the issues, Marraffino has a story where the message is subtext, a subtext created in part because the characters are not self-aware. Obviously, it’s not what I would have done, but I think it’s a perfectly valid creative choice and it may very well resonate more with today’s readers than my story would.

3. Plot

Lastly, one of the major differences between my story and Marraffino’s is the plot. Marraffino’s story essentially treats the burgeoning relationship between Jamal and the General as the plot; that is to say, while there are battles, fights, explosions and encounters, they are pretty much random (as they might well be in the day to day life of a tank in a battle zone) and serve either as background for the conversation or as a prod for the next character bit. The development of the characters and the arc they go through are the narrative force for the series and the action is incidental.

My story was quite different. While the relationship between the characters was the important part, it took place within the context of an action story that also had a complete arc. My hope was to provide a character arc for people interested in character and a straightforward action story for people interested in action. I won’t get into it too much, but basically it had to do with the use of a mystical artifact that the North Vietnamese had obtained and which was being taken to an ancient temple; thanks to the supernatural background of the ghost, the crew of the Haunted Tank ended up being the only ones who could track it down. In the end there were some ninja-monks and the summoning of a dragon along with some mystical ghost-catchers that would give our gang a lot of difficulty.

One of the main uses of setting the story in Veitnam, then, was the ease with which I could introduce the magic elements of the storyline. This was important to me because I wanted to make the General a more active participant in the story; in most of his original appearances he basically did nothing except to show up and give a cryptic warning here or there about enemy troops or upcoming battles. By bringing in mystical enemies that could pose a threat to the ghost, I wanted to make him an integral part of the action instead of just a mascot. After all, he’s supposed to be protecting these guys, not just watching them helplessly as they get shot to pieces.

Marraffino also seems to have been thinking along these lines, but again his solution is very different. While I crafted a plot that would bring in other magic elements, Marraffino settled on a simpler plan: he just gave the ghost the ability to affect the physical realm. In Haunted Tank #3, for example, he runs roughshod over a whole mess of Iraqi tanks, slicing shells in half and running people through with his sword. In essence he can become solid when he wants to and remain a ghost the rest of the time.

Both takes are valid. I tend to want my character work to take place within the structure of a larger storyline, but on the other hand, my pitch probably went a little overboard in some areas. By setting the story in Vietnam, it allowed me to bring in some other DC characters that were in Vietnam, including cameos and supporting roles from the likes of Travis Morgan and Richard Dragon. In retrospect, it might have been better to cut some of this stuff out and focus more on the core story, something that Marraffino is able to do unencumbered by twisty plots and ongoing concerns.

Conclusion

My Haunted Tank was the story of a tank commander caught up in the racial and political turbulence of the 1960’s and a serious ghost looking to make amends for the mistakes of his past. The confrontations and debates between these characters took place over the course of a plot that blended action and magic in order to make the General a more active participant.

Marraffino’s Haunted Tank was the story of a group of typical modern soldiers, caught up in the day to day details of the Iraq War and a ghost more concerned with action than with learning from his mistakes. The post-racial arguments between the ghost and the crew comment as much on the superficial confusion of modern society as on the issues themselves.

It’s interesting for me to compare these stories, because in many instances I think Marraffino and I are dealing with very similar themes and concepts (as you would expect when working from the same concept) but approaching them from almost opposite directions. While I wanted to overtly discuss the issues raised by the core premise, in part by creating characters capable of rationally discussing them, Marraffino would rather covertly comment on them in part by creating characters that are incapable of rationally discussing them. While my story used plot as a major element, Marraffino’s story instead used the setting of Iraq to fulfill many of the same narrative needs; likewise, the more emotionally distant setting of Vietnam suited my more rational characters while the emotionally charged setting of Iraq suits Marraffino’s more visceral story better.

Both, I think, are valid takes on the story; and in a way, I think each is more suited to the time when it was created, as I think my original story would have fit in better with the Vertigo of 1997 than Marraffino’s would have, while the reverse is also true. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed Marraffino’s series, but by the same token I don’t think it was meant to be enjoyed per se but rather was meant as a statement about both the war and modern American culture, and on those fronts I think it succeeded. I can only hope that had my story been published it would have succeeded as well.

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Breaking the Fourth Wall: Episode 3

For over twenty years, The Haunted Tank was one of DC’s most popular and successful war comics, trailing only Sgt. Rock in both categories. With the entire war genre essentially collapsing permanently in the early 80’s, though, Haunted Tank became a property adrift – no title, no stories, few fans, heck, they weren’t necessarily even in continuity after Crisis of Infinite Earths. In other words, they were pure writing gold.

It’s long been held that second tier characters are the way to make your mark in the industry. No editor is going to hand the reins of Batman or Spider-man to some unknown, but stuff like Haunted Tank is a totally different story. A property that was popular once can be popular again, so it’s ripe for some new creator who wants to make a name and is eager to try a new approach.

With this in mind, when I decided to break into comics back in 1997 I started with the Haunted Tank. The premise behind the series was pretty simple: during World War II, Jeb Stuart, the commander of a Stuart tank fighting in Europe, discovers that he and his tank are being watched over by the ghost of their namesake, confederate General J. E. B. Stuart. And… that’s it. That’s the whole premise. They tool around doing tank stuff and every so often the ghost shoes up, says something cryptic, and then vanishes. Not too complex, really, just a different hook for essentially the same war stories DC was telling in their other titles.

My idea for a revamp was pretty simple as well: have J. E. B. Stuart’s ghost show up in a different, more morally conflicted war (Vietnam) where he has to deal with an African-American tank commander instead of a good ol’ boy. How would the ghost react to the ethos of a conflict very different from either the Civil War or WWII? And how would he react to being the protector of a black namesake? More to the point, how would the new tank commander feel about having a confederate ghost looking out for him?

Overall, I thought it was a good idea and when I submitted my pitch to Vertigo they seemed to agree; I got a nice handwritten letter from an editor encouraging me to tighten the story up and resubmit it. Nothing came of that opportunity in the end, but the idea itself remained viable. Viable enough, in fact, for Vertigo to publish a Hunted Tank mini-series earlier this year with the exact same premise (only moved forward from Vietnam to Iraq).

Now, let me say right off the top here that I don’t think there’s the slightest chance in the world that either the current editors at Vertigo or the author of the series, Frank Marraffino, knew anything at all about my proposal. That is, in fact, what makes this particularly interesting to me, because it raises a few points about how creators create that I’d like to discuss. I’ve learned a few things about writing over the years and the first and most important thing is probably this:

Ideas Are Not Precious

When I was young, if I came up with a cool idea I would horde it. It would go in the Secret Vault of Ideas, where it would be nurtured and suckled. It’s something that I’ve seen other writers talk about as well – the thought that ideas are rare and precious and that if you have a good idea you should hold on tight to it, protect it and be as careful as possible with it because you never know when another good idea might come along.

Well, sorry, but I happen to think that’s a bunch of bullshit. Ideas aren’t precious. In fact, ideas are a dime a dozen, and nowhere is this more true than in the shared universes that populate the comic book world. If you look at the basic facts behind the Haunted Tank, for instance, there’s only so much to work with. The strange thing isn’t that two creators looking at Haunted Tank came up with the same idea, it’s that it hadn’t already been done. Now, it might seem like I’m arguing against myself – if ideas are a dime a dozen, then how can there be such a finite number of ideas – but my point here is this: there’s a lot of incredibly creative people working in comics (and in books, and in movies, and in television…) and they are all constantly coming up with ideas. No matter how great you think your idea is, it’s pretty much a guarantee that if you hadn’t thought of it, someone else would have – that is, as long as it’s actually a good idea.

This is what I think of as simultaneous development. It happens a lot in comics because people are using the same tropes, the same concepts and in many cases the same exact characters and source materials, so of course they are going to sometimes come up with the same ideas. For example, people have noted the similarities between Captain America: Rebirth and the whole Batman in Final Crisis thing with the cave or whatever the hell is going on there. Yes, the stories are similar, but it’s not because these writers are ripping each other off, it’s because they are both referencing the same source material – i.e. ripping off Kurt Vonnegut. And even when creators aren’t overtly referencing the same stuff, they are still working within the same cultural zeitgeist. Sometimes ideas just happen because it’s time for them to happen and who actually comes up with the idea is almost irrelevant.

This Haunted Tank story isn’t the only time an idea I have had was duplicated in comics; it’s not even the only submission I’ve done that ended up getting published by someone else (though it is the most interesting case). But it’s not because anyone is stealing my ideas, it’s just because the ideas were good enough that other people had to come up with them as well. Personally, don’t think someone should spend too much time worrying about having their ideas stolen; in general, I think protecting ideas stifles them and robs them of their energy. Sharing ideas broadens them. I feel like, if someone steals my idea, well, so what. After all, there’s a dozen more where that came from (Note: this is easier to say since nobody has actually stolen any of my ideas, of course.)

Now, this all might seem a bit discouraging, since I seem to be saying that no matter how good your idea is, someone else is going to come up with something as good, better or identical. But don’t worry, because if there’s one other thing I’ve learned, it’s this:

Ideas Are Not Stories

This is true in a couple ways. First of all, there’s the technical sense, which goes back to my previous comments about having your idea’s poached. Legally speaking, as has been pointed out to me a few times recently, you can’t copyright an idea but you can copyright a story. So if you’re really worried about it, getting down to brass tacks and writing your story will take care of half of the issue.

But that’s not what I’m really talking about here. What I mean by this is that having a good idea for a story is not the same thing as actually writing a good story. At best, an idea suggests story possibilities. But it’s not plot, it’s not character, it’s not pacing. It’s just a concept that needs to be fleshed out before there’s really anything to speak of.

Take, for instance, my Haunted Tank idea. So we have a Civil War ghost stuck in the Vietnam War dealing with a black tank commander. Okay. Well, that suggests some things that you would want to explore on the character side (which I mentioned briefly earlier). But it doesn’t tell you how to go about exploring them. What actions take place to bring these interactions about? How do the characters feel? How do they change through their interaction? Where do they start and where do they finish – what’s the conflict and what’s the climax? In other words – what’s the story?

The fact is that if you give 50 writers the same exact idea, they are going to come up with 50 different stories based on it. Some of them may be similar, but none of them will be identical, because an idea is just a starting point; it’s the process of development that turns that into something viable and interesting. In other words, an idea is not a story, and it’s the story that matters in the end, not the idea itself.

In sum, then, my two maxims here equal one basic writing fact: work is more important than imagination. A lot of brilliant ideas turn out to be bad stories, or worse, never turn into stories at all. Why? Because the work isn't done to turn that idea into a viable story. People fall in love with the purity of the idea and it comes at the expense of the finished product. But an idea is nothing more than an ingot that needs to be pounded into a useful shape -- potential in the hands of the right craftsman.

Nothing more and nothing less.


Coming Up: So if the story is more important than the idea, just what was the story I sent in? And what was the story that Vertigo and Frank Marraffino published? Tomorrow we’ll take a closer look at both, comparing them to see what choices were made, why and how those choices ended up making one story or the other stronger or weaker.

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Tales From the Vault: G. I. COMBAT #127

Look, it's a story written during the Vietnam War about a World War II tank crew directed by a Civil War Ghost. I'm just sorry they couldn't work any Peloponnesians into it. Let's dig in!

Details: This issue of G. I. Combat, which like most features a cover by the legendary Joe Kubert, has a cover date of Dec.-Jan. 1967, or in other words, January of 1968. Even at this late date, however, there aren’t any story credits. I’m going to go out on a limb here and postulate that the first story is by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert. Because, well, I think they all were, weren’t they?

Synopsis One: First up is a story featuring the Haunted Tank called "Mission -- Sudden Death!!" Yes, it's about the golden goal system in World Cup soccer. The story starts with Jeb Stuart and his tank caught in the middle of a tank battle, as tanks so frequently are. Some tanks shoot at each other and one of them explodes; sadly, it's one of ours. Our little American shells just can't penetrate the enemy's defenses. To wit:

"The shell bounced off of the hide of the Nazi tank like it was just a ping pong ball..."

Looking to avenge their friend, Jeb swings his tank around and they shoot the enemy and blow them up. Hmm. I guess that's why these guys are the stars of the book; even though they were driving the exact same type of tank, their round worked while the other guy's just bounced off. Funny thing, that.

Anyway, having dispatched the bad guys, Jeb rushes to the ruined tank. It's too late for the Skipper -- not the Gilligan's Island guy, but the tank driver, who is also named Skipper -- but before he dies, Skipper orders them to head somewhere for a rendezvous with the French Resistance. You know, judging by how many French Resistance units there are in comic books, you'd think the entire population of Europe was hiding under a barn in Normandy with a short wave radio and a beret waiting to hear that John has a long mustache.

Suddenly, the ghost of J.E.B. Stuart shows up and gives his namesake this helpful warning:

"...you will have to fight on a different battlefield than you imagine for your mission to be successful!"

However, he refuses to say anything more and vanishes. Wow, that was incredibly useless. A different battlefield than he imagines? That could literally be anything. The moon? Inside a dance hall? On top of old smokey? Jeb is like, "thanks for nothing" and the tank carries on.

Suddenly, because everything is sudden, there's... oh, wait. This actually takes place "Three hours later". My bad. It's the next panel in the story, so it seems pretty darn sudden. But, anyhow, a big American plane is flying overhead being shot to pieces by a German fighter. Jeb and gang decide to pitch in by shooting at the fighter with their tank, which... can they do that? Apparently so, because they shoot the fighter down. Nice one. Not as impressive as Dum Dum Dugan knocking down German planes with hand-thrown grenades, but pretty good.

Too late to save the Americans, though; our plane also crashes. There goes the rendezvous, except, wait! Yep, one person parachuted out and it's none other than ubiquitous French Resistance leader Mme. Marie. I wonder if anyone's ever done a Mme. Marie timeline. She must have appeared in one story or another on every single day of the entire war. Now, though, her mission is super duper important: rescue her father, who is also a big scientist type. Uh-oh. I hope he isn’t being forced by the Nazis to create the ultimate weapon!

Gathering themselves up, they all head out, randomly blowing up another German tank on their way. Then they hide their own tank and get ready to sneak into town. They aren't allowed to shoot, because that would raise a general alarm. Suddenly, though, a German patrol shows up, led by a hound dog who, upon finding the tank crew, shouts "ARRGH!" Arrgh: for when barking just isn’t enough.

Anyway, the crew jumps in with their fists, since they can't shoot, and luckily -- not just now but for the rest of the whole story -- none of the Germans shoot their guns either. I guess they don't want to risk alerting themselves. Dispatching the patrol, the crew gets into town and quickly finds Mme. Marie's father. A couple right hooks and no shooting later they grab him and run to safety, punching out yet another squad:

"We fought in a deadly silence -- knowing that a single shot could arouse the garrison..."

Ah, that's it: the Germans don't fire either because they want to let their friends get some serious shuteye. That makes sense. And. sure enough, a couple panels later, yet another patrol finds them and again no shots are fired, just punches. That's four fistfights.

Finally breaking clear, the crew commandeers a truck and races towards where their tank is hidden. Unexpectedly, an enemy tank shows up. Everyone bails out except Jeb and Marie, who wait until the last moment, then jump, leaving behind a pile of grenades. The truck crashes into the tank and blows it sky high. Well, that might finally alert the guards. Sure enough, the guards have sent out two of their tanks, but by now the crew has gotten in their own tank. They use the ol' rope-a-dope: maneuvering between the other two tanks, they sit there until the two tanks fire and accidentally shoot each other. Works every time.

And that's that. The tank rolls to safety and J.E.B. Stuart shows up again to congratulate his namesake. Jeb is all, "How could we miss -- with you guarding our tank?" Here's how: HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. The damn ghost only shows up in three panels. All he did was give some totally useless cryptic nonsense. Bah.

THE END!

Synopsis Two: The other story in this issue is called "Last Chance for Hobie!" This actually has a signature from Jack Abel, so at least I know who did the art, but there's no writer listed. Anyhow, the story is pretty simple and is telegraphed from a billion light years away (which is impressive distance for a telegraph) so I'm going to be brief:

Hobie washed up in flight school, so he became a bomber. However, when it came time to raid, he couldn't hit any targets with his bombs. One day he crashes and some resistance fighters (there they are again) give him a captured German plane, which he uses to sneak through enemy lines and destroy the base he had failed to bomb. The Air Force decides the proof is in the pudding and transfers him to flight school to become a fighter pilot.

Sure, whatever.

THE END!

Extras: The lettercolumn in this issue is kind of… odd. There are four letters published, and the two longest ones are both about issue #92. You'll note that, thanks to the bi-monthly nature of the title, #92 appeared a full five and a half years before this issue, #127, came out. Nothing like some timely commentary. Of course, I’m reviewing a comic book that came out in 1967 so what the hell do I know.

Another person writes in to complain that the tank crew is driving a tiny Stuart tank which is constantly outclassed by the giant German tanks and he thinks it's goofy. Robert Kanigher, who answers all these letters himself and signs his initials so you know it, rebuts with a couple jokes along with this irrefutable logic:

"Besides, our tank is haunted."

Yup. Score one for Robert Kanigher. That statement can pretty much end any argument about the believability of the stories in G.I. Combat. It's too bad Sgt. Fury didn't have a haunted tank to shut up all the knobs who wrote in to complain that their comic book wasn’t hewing close enough to reality.

My grade: C+ for the Haunted Tank story; the art was good as expected and the story was weird and boring and the ghost didn't do a single damn thing. Even Mme. Marie couldn't bring this up. The backup story gets a B-; the execution was fine, but you could see it coming a mile away.

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