Writer Robert Kanigher was particularly good at coming up with concepts for fantastic adventure stories that weren’t quite superheroes.
“With legendary artist Joe Kubert, he created Sgt. Rock and Easy Co., and would write the bulk of their adventures until his retirement,” observed comics historian Chris Sims. “His stories were marked by action and a weariness of combat that made his characters seem human, even while they were battling Nazi supermen with metal fists and shooting down airplanes with handguns. But while Rock might’ve had that glow of realism to it, war comics also provided the jumping off point for some of his stranger creations: The War That Time Forgot, in which soldiers battled against an island of dinosaurs (awesome) and The Creature Commandos, in which a crack team of monsters, including a vampire, a werewolf, a Medusa, and a Frankenstein named Lucky were sent to assassinate Hitler (super awesome).”
I was intrigued by Kanigher’s Haunted Tank feature, which provided the inhabitants of a World War II M3 Stuart tank with an invisible assist from the machine’s namesake, beginning in G.I. Combat 86 (May 1961).
“The Haunted Tank was actually a series of tanks commanded by Lt. Jeb Stuart,” noted the DC Comics Encyclopedia. “The spirit of Alexander the Great assigned the spirit of Confederate Gen. James Ewell Brown (J.E.B.) Stuart to become the ghostly guardian of a Stuart M3 tank in Northern Africa.”
“The Haunted Tank is best remembered for the (art) work of Russ Heath and the remarkable run of Sam Glanzman, who worked on 134 consecutive episodes, from #154 until its demise,” Mike Conroy noted.
The feature’s 26-year run finally finished in 1987 when G.I. Combat ended with issue 288.
On reflection, Stuart’s bearded ghost appeared a little old to me. After all, the flamboyant Virginian died at the tender age of 31, having been mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern in 1864.
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