Wildman
1908 - Harold Shapiro is born in California.
1926- 18-year-old Harold goes to college to study History on a baseball scholarship.
1928- 20-year-old Harold is able to earn a full academic scholarship, allowing him to leave colligate sports and pitch in the minor leagues while continuing his studies.
1930 - 22-year-old Harold begins his post-grad work in World & European History.
1931- 23-year-old Harold chooses to end his baseball career to focus on his studies.
1932 - 24-year-old Harold earns his masters degree, and becomes a history professor.
1935 - 27-year-old Harold is married.
1937 - 29-year-old Harold's son is born.
1941 - 33-year-old Shapiro goes to fight in WWII after Pearl Harbor, becoming the explosives expert of Easy Company. They ship out to England to prepare to fight.
1942 - 34-year-old Shapiro & Easy Company are sent into the fight.
1945 - 37-year-old Shapiro & the rest of Easy Company are killed to the man in the last battle of WWII.
The Sergeant Rock comics were action-packed adventures, and while they definitely had a group of named characters that made up Rock's Easy Company, they for the most part didn't drive the story so much as populate it. We did learn more about them over time, just because they appeared so often, but it was pretty peripheral to the actual excitement du jour.
So we are going to do something fun. We have a specific archetype in mind; one taken from a specific story that we believe was itself taking cues from Sergeant Rock and Easy Company, and will use that as our template for these characters.
So we are going to do something fun. We have a specific archetype in mind; one taken from a specific story that we believe was itself taking cues from Sergeant Rock and Easy Company, and will use that as our template for these characters.
Wildman's StoryWildman actually debuts in the same issue as Jackie Johnson, in issue #113 of Our Army at War in 1961. Both characters are injured with Wildman's hands and Jackie's eyes bandaged, and Wildman acts a Jackie's eyes as they work together to take out the tank with a machine gun. While Jackie didn't appear again until much later, Wildman returned only a few issues later in #120, in a story showing how different members of Easy earned their nicknames. Here we learn that Wildman actually came into the war as a very calm, professor-ly character who liked nothing more than to read, but who eventually grew out his beard and fought like a Wildman. That characterization followed him through the series, although most of his appearances are more just about him being a recognizable figure.
This is actually, of all the Easy Company characters we're adapting into our template, maybe the only one that gave us a little bit of pause. He's characterized by his big beard & mustache, and his tenancy to get crazy in battle, and that does absolutely remind us of a particular character, but that character carries a giant machine gun, so he fits Bulldozer much closer. Instead, we should remember that Wildman is actually an explosives expert, a former baseball pitcher and history professor. His parallel character is also an explosives expert. When Bulldozer claims he doesn't have time to bleed, Wildman can respond; Do you have time to duck? |
|