G.I. Joe #36

When Captain King's pride in Baker Company gets challenged by a rival officer, he puts his men through a grueling fifty-mile hike in simulated combat conditions—all for a case of pop. Sgt. Mulvaney drives the exhausted soldiers hard, testing their discipline and resolve as they push toward Ox Mountain Pass, with Pvt. Burch learning some hard lessons about what it really means to be a soldier. This 1954 war story captures the clash between an officer's ambition and the grit required to back it up.

Cpl. Reilly figures he's found the perfect mark in Pvt. Alvin "Ugly" Otis—a scheme to sell him a tiny scrap of waterfront property for a hundred bucks, positioning him as the "man in the middle" who'll rake in profits when developers come calling. But when construction crews do arrive with serious money, Reilly learns that good intentions and smooth talk can't outrun the fine print—or an old friend with a keen eye for loopholes.

Pvt. Bragg races against the clock to escape kitchen patrol duty so he can make a dinner date with Mable, hatching a desperate scheme that lands him in Mess Sgt. J. Gruff's care—but his troubles are just getting started when his date expects fine dining and Bragg's wallet has other ideas. This four-page romp from Brown and Gantz proves that sometimes the real battle isn't in the mess hall, it's at the restaurant table.

Pvt. Alvin Otis, self-conscious about his looks, visits a plastic surgeon in Tokyo hoping for a transformation—and Dr. Gordon delivers results that turn heads back at camp and catch the eye of a sophisticated woman named Clementine Clavendish. As Otis basks in his newfound confidence and attention, his bunkmates watch with a mixture of disbelief and suspicion about what comes next.