What's This? The war that time forgot.
The facts: Created by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru, Dinosaur Island is the setting for a weird war strip called The War That Time Forgot, running in Star-Spangled War Stories from issue #90 (1960) to #137 (1968), in which various WWII soldiers fought dinosaurs on a mysterious island in the Pacific. Usually, these soldiers were not recurring characters, but some did appear 2-4 times, include "name" characters like G.I. Robot and, with the most appearances (almost a dozen), the original Suicide Squad. Dinosaur Island would thereafter appear from time to time and be visited by the likes of the Creature Commandos, the Losers, and the Birds of Prey. Tim Truman's Guns of the Dragon (1998) offered an origin story for the island, and Bruce Jones wrote a War That Time Forgot mini-series in 2008 that had snatch warriors from across history.
How you could have heard of it: Dinosaur Island plays a big role in Darwyn Cooke's celebrated New Frontier project (2003), which was made into a popular animated film in 2008.
Example story: Star-Spangled War Stories #98 (August-September 1961) "The Island of Thunder" by Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito
When Nicki was a kid, he liked to scare girls with his dinosaur models. As an adult, he became a paleontologist, and then was drafted into the army during World War II. So what better place for him to end up than Dinosaur Island? Part of his training had been dinosaur movies of course, but let me ask you some questions here:
If Nicki was a college graduate in the early 40s, he must have been a boy in the early 30s. So what is this movie that's in living color, with that super-wide screen, and presenting scientifically accurate dinosaurs (according to young Nicki)? But I'm getting distracted. Le's head to the Pacific Theater where Nicki's wish of seeing these giant beasts in the flesh is about to come true - King Kong's paw is about to close a finger. No dinosaur bones have ever been found in the Pacific basin, so he's naturally peeved at his assignment, at least until an enormous pterodactyl grabs hold of his transport plane.
You don't have to GO to Dinosaur Island to GET there, y'know? The plane is actually snatched after entering a thick, mysterious fog bank, that almost makes you believe the island might be back in the past. The soldiers shoot the creature with a bazooka, marvelling at how much better they're doing than the cavemen of old (so they don't all have Nicki's education - then again, this is the DCU, they might be right), but the plane is by then damaged and everyone has to bail out. From the frying pan, as they say...
Wait, there were MULTIPLE tanks aboard that plane?! So out of the pterodactyl's claws and into the moasaur's jaws, but the men make it onto land at least. Where their tanks run afoul of an angry triceratops!
Once again, the bazooka takes care of the problem. Nicki - or "Mr. Bones", as his unit calls him - is getting frustrated that he can't bring one of these monsters back to civilization. Maybe the next one. But no, a dimetrodon (NOT a dinosaur, folks, they're from an earlier era) blocks their way across a deep ravine which they'd hoped to cross on a massive tree trunk, and it's no friendlier. Kanigher realizes he can't have the soldiers win the same way every time, so he finally does away with the bazooka.
But you might have intuited the formula by now. G.I.s find their way to Dinosaur Island, then meet a series of giant monsters until... well, what? I'll skip over the giant snake that grabs the tank and pushes Nicki and his two friends off a cliff, and skip right to the pterodon that grabs them out of the air, possibly to feed them to its hatchlings (we see a nest and eggs). But Nicki's brothers in arms have other plans.
They crash near the plane and find an inflatable raft in the debris. Perfect, now they can escape and drag the pterodon corpse behind them for study/profit. But a passing jet fighter thinks it's spotted a sub or something and drops a bomb on it.
The men manage to escape the blast, but their treasure is lost. In fact, the whole island they explodes in volcanic fury and nothing but steam is left of it as the G.I.s are rescued by a ship. Whaaa? Is this meant to be the LAST Dinosaur Island story (told out of order), or are there temporal shenanigans at work? Whatever the case may be, the Island and its bestiary remain an unproven tall tale.
Who's Next? The owner of the Philosopher Stone.
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