This series had a lot going against it. It was Marvel, but not part of the 616 universe. No X-Men crossovers! It began in late 1986 but wasn't part of the "New Universe" of non-616 series that consumed Marvel promotional attention in the final days of Jim Shooter's tenure. It was military but wasn't based on a popular line of toys like G.I. Joe, which was doing quite well for Marvel and Hasbro.

Furthermore, it had a decidedly philosophical bent, replete with regular quotations from fine literature. Oh, and its main characters had a disturbingly high turnover rate; they were metabolically unstable super-soldiers prone to explode in a flash of light a few issues after entering the series.

Despite all these challenges, the first twenty issues told a strong, character-based continuing narrative of humanity under siege, exploring the propaganda tools used to recruit soldiers for a suicide mission. The antagonists were barbaric aliens who scavenged American pop culture for profit without understanding what they were destroying. A metaphor of Hollywood? Writer Peter B. Gillis and artists Brent Anderson and Scott Williams ended their run here, though the series lasted eleven more issues under a different premise and birthed a brief sequel series as well.

This pencil version of the final cover of the Gillis/Anderson/Williams run features all fifteen super-soldiers, from those that died in the early issues to the fourth generation that were still around twenty issues later. Anderson inked this on a vellum overlay, thus preserving both pencil and ink versions separately. The final cover superimposed the inked image monochromatically over a list of the soldiers' names in a sort of "Vietnam Memorial Wall" tableau.

Gillis gave each character a clear personality, super-power, and perspective. Anderson gave each a distinct face, body type, and stance. I'm not aware of any other image that shows them all together. Someone cut off the top of the page, eliminating the blank space where the masthead would have gone.

I reviewed this entire series, issue by issue, in 2018 for the Classic Comics Forum.

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