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"They were winners to the end."
Jun. 13th, 2008 02:05 pmBeen reading through the Volume 2 of the DC Comics Showcase phone book ''The Haunted Tank''. This volume has the story from G.I. Combat #138 (Oct.-Nov. 1969) that introduced my favourite of Kanigher's World War II creations: the Losers.
The Losers were fighter pilot Johnny Cloud, the Navajo Ace; PT Boat Captain Storm and infantrymen Gunner and Sarge (and Pooch). All of them suffered the painful guilt of having men under their command die and they somehow surviving, and considered themselves jinxed. So naturally, they are formed into a special operations unit, to take up the missions that no one expects them to walk away from.
Oh, Bob Kanigher, you always give me the best crack. As Chris Sims puts it: "Why? BECAUSE BOB KANIGHER. THAT'S WHY."
Of course, the best portrayal of the Losers post-Kanigher has to be Darwyn Cooke's exquisite handling of them in DC: The New Frontier, a sequence which sadly didn't make it to the animated version. Well, sort of.
In the book, the Losers all perish during one last mission near the end of the war to rescue Rick Flag's Suicide Squadron from Dinosaur Island — all Kanigher creations. After making sure Flag gets out, Johnny Cloud launches himself into the mouth of the T-Rex that has claimed the lives of his team-mates, holding two live grenades. The results are as awesome as you can imagine, and frankly, if you don't feel the slightest freak out just from the images that a sentence with the words "T-Rex" "live grenades" and "launches himself into the mouth of" all together conjures up (not to mention the sheer creative potential of the names "Suicide Squadron" and "Dinosaur Island")... you have no soul.
The movie transfers this badass move to King Faraday, but the book version's better. Cloud's last words, etched on a cave wall to greet anyone who might discover it in future:
So when's that Showcase edition for the Losers coming, DC? Because I'll be first in line.
The Losers were fighter pilot Johnny Cloud, the Navajo Ace; PT Boat Captain Storm and infantrymen Gunner and Sarge (and Pooch). All of them suffered the painful guilt of having men under their command die and they somehow surviving, and considered themselves jinxed. So naturally, they are formed into a special operations unit, to take up the missions that no one expects them to walk away from.
Oh, Bob Kanigher, you always give me the best crack. As Chris Sims puts it: "Why? BECAUSE BOB KANIGHER. THAT'S WHY."
Of course, the best portrayal of the Losers post-Kanigher has to be Darwyn Cooke's exquisite handling of them in DC: The New Frontier, a sequence which sadly didn't make it to the animated version. Well, sort of.
In the book, the Losers all perish during one last mission near the end of the war to rescue Rick Flag's Suicide Squadron from Dinosaur Island — all Kanigher creations. After making sure Flag gets out, Johnny Cloud launches himself into the mouth of the T-Rex that has claimed the lives of his team-mates, holding two live grenades. The results are as awesome as you can imagine, and frankly, if you don't feel the slightest freak out just from the images that a sentence with the words "T-Rex" "live grenades" and "launches himself into the mouth of" all together conjures up (not to mention the sheer creative potential of the names "Suicide Squadron" and "Dinosaur Island")... you have no soul.
The movie transfers this badass move to King Faraday, but the book version's better. Cloud's last words, etched on a cave wall to greet anyone who might discover it in future:
"Ask my family and they'll tell you I was a Navajo. Ask the Army Air Force and they'll say I was an American. But if you ask my brothers, they'll set you straight.Yeah, baby. Annihilation fantasies? Moi?
John Cloud was a Loser."
So when's that Showcase edition for the Losers coming, DC? Because I'll be first in line.
