Star Spangled War Stories #1

Looks like DC still had some War Comic Trademarks they needed to prove they were still using before they lost them.

DC Comics attempted two other war comics before this, Men of War and GI Combat. They were both terrible. And awful. And really fucking lousy. But then what do you expect when the guys running the show, the ones shaping the identity of the titles each month, the editors that help guide the creative team along by the hand on the choke collar around the team's neck...what do you expect when those guys don't even know the difference between Antarctica and the Arctic?! Of course they're going to choose a direction for a war comic that's going to be the shittiest possible direction they can take it! They don't know north from south! That's a metaphor for not knowing shit from gold!

In Men of War, DC Comics thought the readers would by dying to know what became of Frank Rock's grandson! Turns out, he couldn't fucking make it in high school so he dropped out and joined the army. This happened right around the first Iraq War and he suddenly found himself in Hell. He married the woman he was dating at the time because he was fucking scared to lose himself and his connection to his old way of life. It didn't matter that they barely got along! His dick had been in her vagina and now his dick was going to be in the shit and it didn't know what the fuck to do! So he married her and then moved her away from everything and everybody she knew to live eight states away while he was flown across the sea to sit around in a desert for months. His time in that war was uneventful and upon returning to the states and doing the last of his time, he gracefully bowed out of his military career and his marriage and moved on.

Eventually Frank Rock the Third married again. He had a family and moved around and became steadily more lost and depressed. He thought it would be easy to find a job as an ex-military man that had experience and training that the government of the United States spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on. But nobody wanted to hire him. He bounced from shitty job to shitty job. His marriage was on the rocks because she looked at him and all she saw were the multiple times he cheated on her because he was scared and helpless and grasping at any living thing that showed any sign of comfort. He looked at her and just saw an angry woman who was constantly looking for ways to get small bits of herself back by taking them out of him. And who could blame her? He was just dragging her behind as he spiraled out of control.

And then Frank Rock the Third was saved. He sat there, barely comprehending what he was seeing, watching the news reports as the World Trade Centers burned. America was under attack. This he could understand! This is something he could do something about! This was his ticket back into the military without looking like he'd failed on the outside! He could be a hero! He could be a man of action and honor and bravery! He would join up again to save his fucking country and probably his marriage too!

And once Frank Rock the Third was overseas having adventures, they really weren't fucking exciting enough to be showcased in a comic book. Boring! I'd rather have seen his life I made up leading up to his time in Men at War!

G.I. Combat at least had dinosaurs, so that was something (even if the story surrounding the dinosaurs put everyone to sleep)! Plus it had the Haunted Tank battling the Nazi Warwheel! But even that wasn't enough to put asses in the seats, or whatever the saying is to get people to read comic books. Putting the sea monkeys in the mail? I don't know! I think I was trying to make a point somewhere!

So now, the DC Editors with their big computer banks worth of brain power finally hit on a popular idea for a war story: ZOMBIES! People love zombies right? Zombies are a hip, new, cool trend that in no way has overstayed its welcome by nearly twenty five years, right?! The kids will go nucking futs over this thing! G.I. Zombie! The only thing that might sell better would be G.I. Stripper! But then DC would have to hear all that bullshit on Tumblr about how sexist it is and who has time for that shit?! Not DC Comics, that's who not! So let's see if this G.I. Zombie is the comical war hero to save the War Comic Book Industry!

The story begins with no zombie in site! No war either! Just a biker bar in Nowhere, Mississippi (isn't that everywhere in Mississippi? OH! Mississippi burning! Double OH! Insert stereotypical joke about the poor education of a southern state! Triple OH!) and a biker named Duke and an ex-con named Tiff and a whole lot of sexual tension. That zombie won't be able to resist eating the brains of these people. If he can find them! That's a joke that plays off the earlier joke about the quality of a Mississippi education.

This looks like a job for GI Zombie!

I hope GI Zombie turns out to be Achilles' undying corpse as he travels from war to war across civilization's sweeping span! I don't know why he'd wind up in Nowhere, Mississippi at a biker bar though. I think GI Zombie will probably be somebody else.

Tiff chops off the federal agent's hands and then puts a bullet in his head when he won't speak. That must mean he's GI Zombie and she's working with him! This is the oldest trick in the book! It's Biker Gang Infiltration 101! The only reason nobody uses it much is because nobody ever has a zombie around to take the bullet to the head.

Oh wait! Don't bullets to heads kill zombies?! I think Tiff might have fucked up the plan!

Tiff has the bikers throw the dead fed (and his hands!) into the trunk of her car so she can dispose of it in a nearby lake. Instead, she takes it to a motel. Ew! She's a sicko perv!

Actually, the fed is GI Zombie! And bullets to the brain apparently don't kill him. He's a radical new version of zombies that, if they ever get out, the world is fucked! Just like our government to be experimenting with deadly threats that can destroy the entire world. Luckily this guy is on the side of America! I bet other countries have their own zombies and eventually GI Zombie will have to duel one of them. He'll be all, "So we meet again, SS Scheisskopf!" And SS Scheisskopf will be all, "Ihre Gehirne! Ihre Gehirne!"

Listen to how mindlessly he recites that soldier's creed! Total zombie, alright! Hey wait! I think I might be offended by the zombie/soldier subtext here! Mostly offended because I didn't come up with it. Ingenious! I mean, offensive!

Also note the "been around forever" bit! GI Zombie could be Achilles! I hope he is so that I can apologize to everybody for being too good at comic book reading! Somebody clean up my onstage masturbation cage! I've got a self-aggrandizing apology to write!

GI Zombie's name is Jared. That's probably how a worker at Ellis Island would have Americanized Achilles, right?! Damn! My theory is already beginning to fall apart. If I keep insisting I'm correct, it's going to look worse than my constant belief that Harvest was actually vampire Tim Drake from the future! Which I still believe, by the way!

While Tiff sleeps, GI Zombie sneaks out to get some midnight brains. He finds an asshole and murders him in front of his family. But it's okay! The guy was an abusive jerk! It's okay to eat abusive jerks in front of small children! It teaches them a lesson or something.

The next morning, Tiff crashes into a baby deer on the way to recon the place she was going to meet Duke later that night. GI Zombie can't resist eating a nice young nearly dead fawn, so he takes her into the woods to have his way with her. The car is totaled, so Tiff and GI have to walk the rest of the way. When they lay eyes on the biker's camp, they see the biker's have more than just stolen military rifles; they've got Patriot Missiles as well. GI Zombie might be good at ripping off arms and tearing out throats, but can he dodge missiles? I guess we'll find out next month!

Star Spangled War Stories #1 Rating: This is the best war comic put out by DC so far! Sure, the other two books ate dirty asshole, so it didn't have to be spectacularly star spangled to be the best of the lot. It also didn't have a war in it unless you count the war on filthy bikers. Is that a war? I think that's a war! It also might have been just as boring as the previous attempts except for the zombie going around eating civilians and baby deer! Although that doesn't make him an exceptional zombie; it just makes him an average government employee. Before I knew GI Zombie's name was Jared, I guessed he'd be Achilles. But now that I know his name, I'm changing up my guess! I think he's the son of Mahalaleel, father of Enoch! He might have become a zombie due to some kind of hanky-panky with a hot piece of Nephilim. At the very least, I can see why Jared is a career military zombie since he still needs to eat flesh to live. What better place to gather your sustenance than a battlefield!