Haunted tank

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The Haunted Tank is the title of a comic series published by the US publisher DC Comics from 1961 to 1987.

The series, which has the adventures of the crew of an American armored personnel carrier, is to be assigned to the genre of war comics. What was unusual for a war comic was the consistent mixing of the series.

Release dates

The author of The Haunted Tank was the author Robert Kanigher and artist Russ Heath , who developed the series in the early 1960s. The main characters of the series were already featured in a test story in the comic book GI Combat # 87 from April / May 1961. After other stories about The Haunted Tank in GI Combat achieved a sufficiently positive response from the readership, an independent series was finally launched under the title, which was largely designed by Kanigher and Heath. The series reached a total of 288 issues by its discontinuation in March 1987.

Other writers and illustrators who worked on the series over the years included Bob Haney , Jerry Grandenetti, and Joe Kubert , among others .

action

The premise of The Haunted Tank is that the long-late General of the Confederate Army of the American Civil War, JEB Stuart, will be sent back to earth by the spirit of Alexander the Great to watch over American officer Jeb Stuart, who was an advisor and guardian angel during the Second World War, acting as the commander of a tank crew in North Africa. He then drives as a ghost in Stuart's vehicle, a tank (which belongs to the Light Tank M3 Stuart model named after Stuart), which becomes a "haunted tank" when a ghost is animated. In honor of General Stuart, Sergeant Stuart decorated his vehicle with a Confederate flag. One complication is that only Jeb Stuart can see JEB's ghost, so the rest of the crew think he's insane.

In the first years of the series, the crew consists of Stuart's friends Arch Asher (loader), Rick Rawlins (driver) and Slim Stryker (gunner). When Arch is killed in the explosion of a German tank (# 162), he is replaced by Gus Gray. Slim later dies and is replaced by the older Bill Craig (GI Combat # 244). In # 251 Bill's son Eddie Craig also joins the group and takes over Gus' post as loader, while Gus is promoted to second gunner.

Reprints

  • Haunted Tank Volume One, 2006. (reprints 1961-1964 stories).