Sgt. Rock

And he was actually tutored by the older staff members 'cause they just said, "This kid, I can't believe he thinks he can work here." But they trained him, and at that point in time that this article was published, he had been in the business for over 60 years.

And he's famously contributing art to Hawkman and Sergeant Rock, among many other war comics.

And eventually, uh, most famously opened up his own school to train up other young artists like he had been all those years before.

He was even working at this moment on a 120-page Sergeant Rock story with Brian Azzarello, one of the hottest, uh, writers in comics at the moment, and this was called Between Heaven and Hell.

So his career was nowhere near over.

What I find interesting is Kubert explaining the high he gets from illustrating.

Of all the people I've ever met in comics, I've admired Joe and Will Eisner the most, both personally and professionally." So Matt, uh, have you ever admired anything about Joe Kubert or his work?

Well, he's, like, a ... just for sure a generation before my comics.

Uh, co-created Bane, I should say, in case he's listening.

Uh, and [laughs] and, uh, but I got to work with Joe Kubert, who used to work on Sergeant Rock.

Uh, I worked at, with, with John Buscema, who drew Conan the Barbarian for a long time.

Uh, so I've gotten to work with guys that I literally idolized when I was a kid.

And we turn the page, and we are immediately given the gift of Joe Kubert pencils, uh, of Ha- of Hawkman.

Um, again, uh, Kubert, wide-ranging set of books that he worked on, but I think most fans would know him from Hawkman or Sergeant Rock.

Um, but these are, these are amazing pages as well.

John, Earth One John, uh, I've saved this one for you because it's got-

It's reprinted from Star Spangled War Stories, number 132, 1967.

It was also reprinted in DC Blue Ribbon Digest, number 7, from 1981. and from the Sergeant Rock special number 13 in 1991.

So a few places, but it is not digitized as far as I can tell.

An interesting note, I do have the Silver Age Suicide Squad omnibus, which has a bunch of Where the Time Forgot stories in it because they call themselves the Suicide Squadron when they went in there.

But it kind of has a lot of the same flavor as some of those stories that were in that.

But it is not in there.

So you've got to get one of the Digests or this book or Sergeant Rock Special or Star Spangled War stories if you want to read it.

But hopefully we'll do a good job of summarizing it for you.

So they can't do that twice.

So because a lot of that stuff, Booster Gold, the Mascara Swamp thing, Sergeant Rock, none of that's happening.

And I think the fans are, in fact, it's kind of a meme at this point, that none of that stuff is actually happening.

So they can't do that again.

I got the chance to talk to Billy Tucci, for folks who follow us on our show.

When we talked Sergeant Rock, I talked about the Lost Battalion, and he and I were talking about it.

He actually was so enthused.

We were talking for like 20 minutes.

And then we're introduced to the main characters of this movie, i.e. not Jonathan Majors.

the son of his former Delta Force comrade and then like his roommate who is supposedly going to college on a GI bill and has a PTSD scarred veteran who basically just plays Call of Duty on his computer or like, Felix, the video game was some Counter-Strike knockoff and like, he just like, what I loved about this character is that he's always chomping on an unlit cigar like he's fucking like Sergeant Rock.

Yeah.

It's just like a totally different era of like how we code soldiers or whatever.

In the mid-20th century, following World War II and the Korean War, the war genre used to be huge in the industry.

Titles like Sergeant Rock were incredibly popular.

Right.

But over the last 60 years, it hasn't been nearly as popular, largely fading from the mainstream, overshadowed by superheroes.

[laughs]

Uh, ta- talking about, um, GI Robot and, and also, uh, Sergeant Rock, and how that movie-

Mm-hmm

... was supposed to...