“Losers Die Twice” — because the first time was in Crisis on Infinite Earths #03 and done in one panel and Robert Kanigher probably objected.
DC’s war comics, by 1985 reduced to just SGt. Rock and G. I. Combat, had always been kept separate from their superhero titles. While a Sgt. Rock or the Haunted Tank might pop up in a Brave and the Bold issue, you wouldn’t see Batman in Weird War Tales (despite the Creature Commandos being superheroes but in name). Therefore when in the third issue of Crisis the story moved to July 1944 in Markovia (fictional homeland of Geoforce) and various of DC’s war heroes did get drafted in, leading to the death of the Losers, DC decided to also send them off in their own special. Where they died again, but during a proper war story with no superheroes.
The Losers were a Robert Kanigher creation. Kanigher was a writer who had been working for DC Comics since the Golden Age and in the fifties became the main editor and writer for their war titles, something he would keep up until DC cancelled them all in the mid-eighties. The Losers were created in 1969-1970 from characters that had had their own series in the sixties. There was Johnny Cloud, the Navajo pilot, Captain Storm, the PT Boat commander and Gunner and Sarge, Marines (with Pouch their dog). Each of them had been the last survivor of their respective units hence their team name. their series ran in Our Fighting Forces from 1970, from issue 123 to 181, ending in 1978. Bar a few guest appearances in other war comics they hadn’t been seen since.
The special therefore retells each member’s origin stories in flashbacks while they join Sgt. Rock and the Haunted Tank on a mission to destroy a Nazi missile battery in the closing days of the war in Europe. As each origin is told, they die in order but in the end are taken away by Johnny Cloud’s Great Spirit, as depicted on the cover, to presumably some sort of Navajo version of Walhalla. The interior art is by Sam Glanzman, himself a WWII veteran and Judith Hunt, best known as the creator of Evangeline, with writing of course by Kanigher and the cover by Joe Kubert, in case you couldn’t tell. As a story is a typical gloomy Kanigher tale, a way to provide a dignified end to characters out of place in the “All-New DC”.
No Comments