Super Soldiers

by Jason Inman

  This yin and yang relationship is a perfect metaphor for military service in all branches. Throughout my professional life, I have encountered fellow veterans like myself. We all don’t stay in vocations that are similar to our military vocations. I’ve known TV writers, YouTubers, painters, and building repairmen, all of whom were veterans. All walks of life enter the service and leave the service with different ideas of what they want to accomplish, having completed their duty. It’s a situation I encounter often. When people find out I used to be in the Army, it dominates the entire conversation, almost an insufferable amount. Their every question probes me about my life in the service, my time in Iraq. Also, the questions go from simple to ludicrous as their minds try to put together the puzzle that is my life. Here are some examples of questions I’ve actually been asked: “Why did you join?” “Were you ever tricked into doing something against your will?” “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  It’s the last question that bugs me the most. Here’s a tip: Anyone who would ever answer that question in casual conversation is obviously lying.

  I shouldn’t be offended by these questions. People are just trying to learn more about me, but as we all know, human beings are multifaceted. No one part of our life defines us. Not our work experience, not our education, and especially not our skin color—which brings us back to John Stewart.

  John Stewart’s military background took several years to be applied to his comic book incarnation. Green Lantern #26 (2008) is the first comic mention of his marine history. John was struggling to reform the planet Xanshi using only his willpower. As he worked on the impossible task, the caption box read: “When I was in the marines, they used to say that pain is weakness leaving the body.”

  It’s interesting to note that the civilian architect John might have cried in this scene. He would have yelled, cried, or emoted on some level. This new Marine John would not. Instead, he adds further fuel to the willpower-based nature of his Green Lantern abilities. His new methods and beliefs as a marine now make his weapon more powerful. He can focus his pain. He can focus his sadness straight into the ring. This is the start of the comic books doing a better job with his origin as a marine than the animated series did.

  Shortly after the scene in Green Lantern #26, it was finally revealed what John’s job in the marines was. He was a sniper. During the Sinestro Corps War event, Bedovian, an alien sniper, was expertly picking off members of the Green Lantern Corps. The Sinestro Corps was a military organization founded by Sinestro—former Green Lantern, and Hal Jordan’s mentor—who built an army on spreading fear in the galaxy, and Bedovian was an excellent instrument of that fear. One by one, Bedovian killed the emerald soldiers until, in his scope, he saw another warrior looking back at him. Who was it? John Stewart with a shining green sniper rifle looked back at this evil madman and finished him. It remains a defining moment of the event. It’s also a defining character trait for John Stewart because it completely contradicts his first origin. You have to be a very dedicated person to make it through marine sniper scout training. It’s not simply a job in the military; it’s a way of life. To complete the training, a marine must be completely dedicated, organized, and focused. One of the main skills sniper school teaches is the ability to stalk. Can one sneak up on an opponent and not be discovered? A final task to complete the marine sniper scout training is to be able to take two shots on a seasoned sniper instructor. This means students must find and identify the target, secure and move into a sniper position without being seen, and fire on the instructor. These instructors are seasoned pros. They can spot anyone encroaching on their position within seconds. A perfect score is the only way to graduate from this school. You cannot be spotted.

  This training teaches you to be independent. Out there, it’s just you with your weapon, alone in the wilderness. You have to complete the mission or else you fail. There are no other outcomes. It teaches a marine patience and fortitude to get past all the small blunders that could be detrimental to the success of the mission. This means John Stewart would be a very focused man—a man who could hone in on the end goal, rather than the mistakes of his fellow Lanterns. He can be a part of the whole team, or be a singular man on a mission. He’s adaptable.

  It took until the gigantic DC Universe crossover Blackest Night in 2009 for readers to see a flashback to John’s time in the marines. In Green Lantern #49 (2010), John Stewart discovered the planet Xanshi, alive and well. Xanshi was the site of John’s greatest failure. Many years ago, he was unable to prevent a bomb in the planet’s core from obliterating Xanshi, but in the present day, Xanshi was somehow alive! John discovered that the Black Lanterns had resurrected the alien world. The Black Lanterns, a group of dead aliens resurrected and given power rings like the Green Lanterns, have the ability to resurrect planets as well as people. They also have the ability to get into anyone’s mind. These Black Lanterns surrounded John as he armored up in emerald fatigues. Suddenly, the Black Lanterns accessed his mind, and forced John to relive one of his worst memories.

  The readers were transported with John to a war zone in an unknown country. It could be Afghanistan or Somalia, but it has never been revealed. We see John Stewart in his marine utility uniform. In front of him were two downed Blackhawk helicopters. Inside one of them was a friend of John’s. Even though he tried to make his way there to rescue the pilot, John was ultimately too late. The mob of insurgents had beaten the pilot and killed his friend. This tragedy set John off. He began firing into the mob and taking people out left and right, letting his anger get the best of him. The Black Lanterns in control of this memory posed a simple question: would John have killed everyone in this mob? John shrugged the suggestion off, the same way he had in the memory. He grabbed the body of his friend and decided to take it home for proper burial, to have no man left behind.

  When John emerged from the memory, he knew the answer to their question. His weakness gnawed at him. He would have killed everyone in that mob, if given the chance for vengeance. It was a weakness and he knew it. However, he’s also a marine. There’s always a new mission. There’s always a new hill to climb, and he didn’t have time for this. With a blast of bright energy from his ring, John tore away from the Black Lanterns’ grasp, ‘cause it’s always time for him to move on.

  “Moving on” is a powerful credo to give a fictional character who is also a service member. While in the service, you can’t become attached to anything beyond your fellow brothers- and sisters-in-arms. You never know where you will hang your hat next, or where your next hot meal will be. All you can count on is the man or woman beside you. They’ll be there. You can count on that. It’s as solid as the Earth, and no force in the universe can break it. If your character believes the same, they will hold fast to their convictions and fight through it all, no matter what. This is a great trait to reveal to your reader.

  One minor gripe about the Blackest Night sequence, if I may. In the captions, John says of himself: “I’m a soldier with a chip on my shoulder.” This is incorrect. Marines are defined by their mission, their training, and their history. They are marines, not soldiers. The Navy has sailors, the Air Force has airmen, and the Army has soldiers. Marines are always called “marines,” and John Stewart would know that. I can only knock the editors and writer of this story for missing this simple, but insulting, detail to marines.

  Change is something I’ve mentioned several times in this chapter, so it’s fitting that the last John Stewart story I write about for you heralds the biggest change the Green Lantern Corps has ever gone through. For a brief period, the Green Lantern Corps was transported to the far reaches of the universe—billions of miles away from the sectors they normally patrolled. When the Green Lantern Corps finally returned, John stepped up and became the new corps leader. These Lanterns found a universe radically different than the one they had known. Their mortal enemies, the Sinestro Corps, had taken over their job protecting the universe, though the
y were creating order through fear, the emotion that drives every decision of Sinestro’s army. John Stewart learned not every Sinestro Corps member was dedicated to Sinestro’s fear-mongering, and some wanted to keep protecting the universe, just like the Green Lantern Corps, except they wanted to keep their yellow rings. Knowing this, John came up with an idea. The two corps would merge, solving both their problems. Adding the Sinestro Corps to their ranks would make up for all the Green Lanterns who were lost on the other side of the universe, and the Sinestro Corps would gain a home. John soon allowed the Yellow Lanterns to install a power battery (the engine that fuels their rings) on Mogo (the sentient home-world base of the Green Lantern Corps). Initially, Hal Jordan opposed this idea, but John convinced him to come around. Teaming up a Yellow Lantern and a Green Lantern in every sector allowed the Green Lanterns to rein in the Yellow Lanterns and ensure that they could do some good in the galaxy. He united two corps and changed the dynamic of protection across the universe.

  John Stewart reconstructs his line of thinking. No other Green Lantern would have come up with this idea. It’s too radical, they would all say. How could we ever team up with our mortal enemies? John saw a better way. Why keep attacking the enemy when we can make them a part of our team? This compromise informs the next fifty issues and five years of Green Lantern stories. It’s something you must admire about John. He uses the enemy’s call for aid to become a sign of strength for the Green Lantern Corps.

  John is a character of revolution—and revolution is not a term that many would relate to the military. Perhaps it is because his character was a free-thinking architect for more of the character’s history than he was a marine, or perhaps it is because the simple fact of being the first African American Green Lantern was revolutionary at the time. John shows us that fictional military characters cannot be limited. He can adjust. He can change, and he can succeed by adapting. John Stewart is a great example of a military hero. The ideals of the marines do inform his positions and make him a stronger character for it. His history change has helped his character grow in ways I don’t think would have been possible if he had simply stayed an architect all these years. John Stewart is proof that modification can be a good thing, in fiction and in life.

  Chapter 6

  Captain Atom

  Lost Time

  There have been several characters named Captain Atom in comics. From the “Golden Age” of Comics to his reinterpretation as Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen in 1986, the idea of a normal human being turned into a god has endured in the sequential art medium. What is it about this idea that so fascinates us? Is it that we all dream of having unlimited powers, or is it the idea that no one can understand or relate to us once we change like that? While there have been many heroes who go by the moniker “Captain Atom,” only one version of this character was intrinsically tied to the military: the Captain Atom introduced in 1987.

  In Captain Atom #1, we were introduced to Nathaniel Christopher Adam in the 1960s. He was tied to a chair in an odd metal room and, over the course of the issue, we learn how he got there. He was a United States Air Force officer who had been framed for a crime he did not commit. To avoid execution, Nate agreed to participate in a secret government experiment under the watch of Col. Wade Eiling. This undertaking granted Nate little chance of survival, but it did ensure him a presidential pardon if he survived. The opening pages of his debut issue featured Nate telling a series of jokes as he faced death, performing a story about a man who was suing his wife for divorce while he pled with Eiling to keep his promise and deliver a letter to Nate’s wife.

  What is it about the connection between the military and the story’s need for characters to volunteer for extreme experiments for the greater good? Our armed forces in the United States ended the draft for soldiers in 1973, and ever since then, our fighting force has been a volunteer army. I volunteered for the US Army myself. Nevertheless, several stories about service members volunteering exist, going all the way back to Captain America’s very first issue, as I mentioned way back in Chapter 1! Is it the drive to serve? The motivation to benefit humanity as a whole? While I see several connections between soldiers and this motivation, this plot device seems to be a shorthand many writers want to employ in their American-grown myths. If we prove our characters are brave enough for armed service, then they are certainly brave enough to be plugged into the Gizmacular 2000 Mackatron Device! (Patent pending by scientist Jason Inman.) It’s certainly a trope I would like to see leave fiction. Armed service members are brave, I do not deny that. Still, they’re not the only ones dumb enough to be poked and prodded by scientists. Many humans out there are willing to do crazier things for way less reward or less noble motivations.

  Back in the story, Nate’s experiment went off! The room filled with energy and revealed that Nathaniel had disappeared. Little did Nate know that he was being signed up for an experiment even more out-of-this-world and ludicrous—even by comic book standards. His experiment was designed to test the strength of an alien ship’s hull. Of course, the only way to test something like that back in the 1960s? Detonate a nuclear bomb under it while a live human being sits inside and see if he survives! Nathaniel Christopher Adam was this human, and it appeared to the observing scientists and airmen that Nate did not survive the force of the blast. The shielding must not have been so effective after all. Thankfully, Nate exists in a comic book. This would not be his last adventure.

  After the experiment, a form was observed on the air base. It spooked a plane that was coming in to land, and scared some guards. It wasn’t much more than a jumble of body parts and flesh that stalked across the airbase. It glowed and moaned as several airmen tried to subdue it. Once they had captured the form and trapped it inside a room, its flesh began to change. It molded into a shiny silvery skin, like the glossy metal you might see on the side of overpriced hubcaps, and at last, it finally appeared human.

  The military personnel and scientists first hypothesized it may have been an alien life form merely mimicking human form, only, right then, General Eiling came on the scene and had a revelation while everyone else stood around telling jokes. Eiling dismissed the men because he recognized the form as a silver version of Nathaniel Christopher Adam, the very man everyone thought had not survived the experiment he’d volunteered for. Nate noticed the general and was confused—when did the colonel he knew become a general? Then the general dropped a knowledge bomb on Nate, poised to destroy his entire world. From Nate’s perspective it had only been a day since the experiment, but, for Eiling and the rest of the world, twenty years had passed!

  Being detached from the movement of time is a common theme in many soldier stories. Think of the most famous comic soldier of all time, Captain America! Steve Rogers’ whole story hinges on being removed from his natural world in the 1940s and forced to reckon with the advancements of today. At the beginning of their origins, these two captains are very analogous. Captain Atom similarly loses twenty years of a life with his family. Nate finds out that General Eiling became the second husband to his now-deceased wife and his daughter has grown up. Consider the implications of that aspect. Every elder family member Adam knew is probably deceased now. The friends he had when he was alive would have thought him dead for over twenty years. Every connection he would have had to the world is long gone. It’s a frightening prospect. We all seek those touchstones in every aspect of our lives, and losing them all in one fell swoop would be rough.

  It is similar to the feeling faced by every soldier who gets deployed. Whether the writers of Captain Atom made this choice intentionally or not, it is a perfect representation of an important aspect of military life. I have even experienced this myself. When you find yourself on deployment, it’s hard not to think that the entire world is moving on without you, and, in truth, the world is moving on. You find yourself stuck in one location, performing the same missions day after day, and it soon feels like you are stuck in time. It becomes
a trap you think you will never escape from. This eternal sad truth soon reveals itself as you lose fellow soldiers. Some people never escape that feeling. What will it be like once I can return to my life? Will I be able to return to my job and fit in like before? Will my significant other or girlfriend still love me? Will hamburgers still taste the same? (Answer: They taste better now.) Everything could have changed, but, since you are in the service, you have not been allowed to.

  I have a vivid memory of this feeling washing over me. I can remember mounting up on the M2 .50-caliber gun on top of a Humvee at the back of a convoy in Iraq. Most convoys in the country would be escorted by three gun trucks: one at the front, one in the middle, and one at the very end to protect the rear. We were driving south from a forward operating base called Scania and the sun began to set. Orange and purple painted the sky behind the convoy, and, as the wind whipped past the back of my head, my mind began to wander. This often happens when you are on protection/guard duty on many missions in the military.