Joe Kubert Hates Puppies

Uh-oh! A Nazi gets hold of Easy Company's puppy in the recent Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy #3!

While I really like the Sgt. Rock mini, I have been less intrigued by the over all story than I am in finding out exactly when the pup (named Pup, by the way) gets sent to doggie-hell via the Kubert Express.

Probably the best indicator that you are destined for a messy end in popular media is to be an ensign wearing a red shirt in Star Trek, Kyle Raynor's girlfriend or a puppy in a comic book featuring the talents of Joe Kubert.

Of late the comic blog-o-sphere has been on fire with speculation as to the ultimate fate of the orphan pup adopted by Easy Company's great big racist soldier known as Bull. Interestingly, the issue is perhaps purposely vague as to what actually happened to the cute little mutt. After all, as Marv Wolfman once asserted, "If you do not personally see a body then they are not dead."

I have so many questions: Is the puppy only wounded? Did the puppy get hurt at all or was he just surprised? Is it...dead? Oh, Joe, you cruel bastard. How can you make us wait until issue #4 comes out to get the full details? I refuse to believe that a puppy in a Joe Kubert opus only gets assigned one measly panel in which to portray it's fate. I think there is some sort of comic book law that requires any Kubertesque dog to get at least 2 pages to show it's death, not counting the obligatory heart-breaking doggie-grave site scene.

A clue as to what ultimately happened to Pup might be seen in Sgt. Rock's face.

Rock reacts to "The Incident". I would not want to be that Nazi.

Another puppy-fate clue is comic history. Joe Kubert is known to be pretty hard on the cute little puppies. For Star Spangled War Stories #148 (Dec 1970), Joe and Robert Kahniger once conspired together to drop a wounded puppy from the open cockpit of a World War I fighter plane piloted by the Enemy Ace for no reason!

As proof of Kubert's dog-hate check this related post from the caveman days of my blog: Luck Is A Puppy Named ..Oops!.

Give me some closure, Joe!