The Marksman story certainly seems to have been inspired by the 1941 Spirit story that Feiffer reprinted in
The Great Comic Book Heroes, with similar blocks of text, lots of prophecies, a babe with a gem and a curse, and the doomed guy's drunken wandering to his… aw, shucks, I already used 'doom' in this sentence… fate. *** Then again, they could have both been inspired by a movie or something that I've never seen! *** At any rate, it moves right along, and the art is good. *** Special bonus! A character named Schultz-Klink! Now you have to wonder if a creator of "Hogan's Heroes" was inspired, in turn, by this story! (It was popular to call the non-com Axis grunts "Schultz" — Warner Brothers used that at least once — but Klink makes it a nice, tall coincidence!) *** It even ends just like the Spirit story. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, with Midnight up front and all. I remember the Spirit story so well because it was my introduction to the character, and not coincidentally, it was when I became a Spirit fan, reading it first in sixth grade. I became a Feiffer fan right about the same time. *** (Sorry about the asterisks. They wouldn't let me use paragraph returns. I think they were afraid I'd hurt myself.)
Link to the book:
Smash Comics 41
