True Comics #42

Patty Berg, a sports-loving kid from Minneapolis, trades football for golf after her father joins a country club—and within three years, the determined teenager wins the Minnesota State Championship. Though early losses to established champions like Glenna Vare and Estelle Lawson Page test her resolve, Berg claims the national title at twenty and turns professional, only to face a life-altering car accident in 1941 that threatens her athletic future. With characteristic grit, she rehabilitates herself and stages a triumphant comeback, but ultimately decides that serving her country takes priority, enlisting in the Marines in 1943 as an officer.

When American military leaders realized that carrier-based planes couldn't regularly reach Japan, they set out to build the world's greatest bomber—the B-29 Superfortress, a massive aircraft dwarfing the already-impressive Flying Fortress. In November 1943, selected airmen began training on this revolutionary machine, learning to operate what their commanders called "a global weapon that can strike anywhere," and soon after, the Superfortresses flew from secret bases in China across thousands of miles to launch their first devastating raid on the Yawata steel works, a vital target that would mark the beginning of relentless attacks on the Japanese homeland.

When King Henry III ignores the Magna Carta, angry nobles led by Simon de Montfort challenge his authority—and in 1265, de Montfort summons the first "Parliament" where merchants, nobles, and churchmen gather together to oppose the crown. This pivotal chapter traces how the idea of parliamentary rule takes root in medieval England, surviving de Montfort's defeat to reshape the kingdom under later monarchs like Edward I and Edward III, even as the nation endures devastating wars, plague, and internal conflict. Witness the gradual evolution of government by consent and the raw drama of nobles and kings clashing over power, property, and the promise of the Magna Carta.

In November 1942, a torpedo strikes an American freighter in the South Pacific, and Cadet Midshipman William Thomas of Alameda, California must make a desperate choice—abandon ship with the other survivors or risk his life searching the sinking vessel for anyone left behind. When Thomas discovers an injured man trapped below decks, he launches a harrowing rescue attempt against the clock, knowing the ship's suction could drag them both down.