Duke Ripley

Bronze Age war comics had a gritty, no-frills energy all their own, and Duke Ripley arrived right in the thick of it with Seaboard's Savage Combat Tales in 1975, brought to life by the talented team of Archie Goodwin and Al McWilliams. A product of that scrappy, short-lived publisher's ambitious output, Ripley shares his hard-edged world with a memorable cast of combat characters — Turk Ankrum, Lee Shigeta, Ice Marko, and Sgt. Ben Stryker among them — giving the series a real ensemble feel. With only three catalog appearances, Duke Ripley is very much a collector's discovery, a rare gem from a fascinating corner of Bronze Age publishing that serious fans of war comics will want to track down.