My Rating
“The One-Armed Beast”
When a prominent leader of the French Underground resistance is captured by Nazi forces, U.S. Military Intelligence has little option but to send in their dirtiest fighters. The next day, 18:00 to be exact, Sgt. Hawk and his team of operatives have infiltrated the outskirts of the Fontainebleau Forest. There, an infamous one-armed Nazi commander is in the process of torturing the young woman for a list of contacts that have made the lives of the German army hell. Can Sgt. Hawk and his men, Corporals White Cloud and Goldberg, save the woman before it’s too late?
“The Sky Demon!”
A rumor had begun to spread through the ranks of the German Navy of a rogue Amerikan pilot with an almost supernatural ability to escape overwhelming odds to destroy his targets. Some called him lucky, others a ghost, but his squadron members had nicknamed Captain Vip Gunner the “Sky Demon”. Would it be just a matter of time before Cpt. Gunner and his “sixth sense” would face an enemy he could not outmaneuver?
“Blazing Battle Tales”
Atlas Seaboard Periodicals gives a big salute to real life Bronze Star winner Pvt. William Swanson of the “Big Red One” U.S. Army division. In this story we follow Pvt. Swanson as he helps storm the beaches in Normandy on June 6th, 1943. We thank both Pvt. Swanson for his deeds and Atlas Seaboard for making his story known to future Americans.
Reviewer Notes
The single issue of “Blazing Battle Tales” is one of those bizarre choices made by Martin Goodman and his staff during their single year as a publishing company. Atlas Seaboard had a very tight budget in 1975, so I just don’t understand why Goodman chose to publish this title when they already had three issues of “Savage Combat Tales” on the newsstands. Was there such a demand for war comics?
I guess we will never know the fate of Sgt. Hawk and the Sky Demon. The stories were very short, so readers don’t get very much information on the main characters. If Atlas Comics was planning to pull readers from more established books like Sgt. Rock, I just do see that happening. Retrospectively, that is. Blazing Battle Tales was a good time filler, but very memorable. I will give it three out of five stars for the art alone. Unless you are specifically collecting this for your Atlas Comics collection, you can pass on this one.
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