Action Adventure Comics #2

A green replacement joins Charley Company for his first taste of combat, and the veterans in the squad show him the ropes as enemy forces attack their ridge line. When the battle ends and fresh recruits roll in, the young soldier realizes he's crossed a threshold—one battle is all it takes to become what he once feared being. "Veteran!" captures that brutal moment when a soldier stops being a kid and starts understanding the cost of war.

Reporter Ed Hammer has been chasing a front-page story for years, always falling short because his pieces lack human interest—until a mad-dog killer gets cornered at the docks and Ed hatches a daring plan to get the exclusive. His risky gambit gets him closer to the action than anyone expected, but he'll learn what "human interest" really means when he finally sees the edition that pushed his story off the front page.

Jason Cross is a stubborn old whaler who refuses to retire, even as the whaling industry modernizes with radar, harpoon guns, and factory ships—because somewhere in the Antarctic waters, a black whale he's battled for years still swims free. When he finally has the killer whale in his sights with all the lethal modern firepower at his disposal, Cross must confront what it truly means to hunt his oldest adversary.