New Releases: DC Comics' G.I. Combat

Ghost tanks? Check. Nazi secret weapons? Check. G.I. Combat #7 has the goods!

Often the cliche that "the best is yet to come" proves valid too late. The same holds true in the comic book world, too. As yet another of the "Second Wave" of DC Comics New 52 initiative gets ready to bite the dust (translation: get canceled!), they actually publish an issue that does what one had been hoping the series (on the heels of the previously canceled "First Wave" title Men of War, which ran 8 issues) would do: in this case, take classic military-themed DC proprieties, modernize them in a way that is current and, most importantly, FUN.

While I've never read any of the previous iteration of G.I. Combat, The Haunted Tank or the basis for the series' first arc, The War That Time Forgot, I have seen the cool images of dinosaurs battling Army grunts or a confederate general driving a World War II tank and wondered to myself "Just how does that happen?"

The previous two issues of DC's G.I. Combat featured the build up to this most recent issue in which the Haunted Tank battles the Nazi War Wheel manned by the decaying body of Rommel (yes, the Desert Fox!). If the premise sounds ridiculous, it is, and marvelously so. The feature, written by Peter J. Tomasi (whose work I have previously read in the 2010-11 series Green Lantern Emerald Warriors) and legendary and controversial artist Howard Chaykin, is also occasionally violent, and heartwarming.

Much like the aforementioned Men of War the last issue of which featured a story of Frankenstein fighting in World War II, it would seem that G.I. Combat saved its best salvo for the final shot.