Star Spangled War Stories #145

Joe Kubert's cover for this 1969 DC issue is genuinely unsettling — a massive bear rears up over a fallen German soldier while a pack of wolves closes in from the surrounding hillside, with Enemy Ace's distinctive red triplane visible in the background. The moonlit scene carries a primal, almost gothic menace that sets the feature character, the Hammer of Hell himself, watching grimly from the banner above. Robert Kanigher's "Return of the Hangman" promises the kind of grim World War I atmosphere that made Star Spangled War Stories one of DC's most compelling war anthology titles of the era.