Saturday, July 13, 2024

The Unknown Soldier Revisited

Signing up for the United States Army together and stationed in the Philippines, two brothers are trapped in their foxhole as the Imperial Army sweep across the islands. Inspired not to lose hope by his older brother who said "one guy can affect the outcome of a whole war! One guy in the right place...at the right time..." before he sacrificed himself on a Japanese grenade to save his younger brother whose face was hideously disfigured from the blast. His tragedy becomes our victory as this one man chose to erase his identity and endure intensive training to become America's top intelligence operative, "The Unknown Soldier". Kanigher and Kubert's war-torn creation appeared first in Our Army at War #168 in June of 1966, before getting his own series in Star-Spangled War Stories #151, in the summer of 1970. This "Man of a Thousand Faces" whose head is always wrapped in heavy bandages, using make-up and latex masks to transforms himself into any individual. Only taking sensitive covert missions behind enemy lines, his only tell, scratching his face where the scars meet under his disguise to give himself away. Such a thorn in the flesh of the Fuhrer, Hitler devised a special Nazi agent, the Black Night, to deal with the lone American. But the Immortal G.I. gets the last laugh as he staged the Fuhrer's "suicide" then disappears to fight another day as the Unknown Soldier!