The final chapter of Peter David's epic prequel trilogy! A.I.M., the Pantheon and even Doctor Doom have all fallen before his might. Finally, the Maestro -- the gamma-spawned tyrant once known as the incredible Hulk -- can reign over his kingdom of Dystopia with a firm green fist. But there are greater threats still lurking in the arid landscape of this ruined Earth...and even the Maestro didn't count on the Abomination rising from the dead and forming an alliance with Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner! Now, this dangerous triumvirate is ready for all-out war. Prepare for World War M! COLLECTING: Maestro: World War M (2022) 1-5
Call him the Maestro! In a broken future, the man once known as the Hulk is now neither man nor Hulk. After deposing Dystopia's ancient ruler, the Maestro sets his sights even higher. It's time everyone left on the ravaged planet Earth recognized their one true god! But the Maestro isn't the only would-be immortal left - and if he wants to truly dominate the globe, he'll have to face the most powerful beings left in creation. The Pantheon sees all - including a Hulk too powerful to leave alive! And just when his former allies have him on the ropes, the Maestro's true enemy shows his face at last - and nobody's going to like the future he has planned! Peter David continues the tale he began decades ago in the legendary HULK: FUTURE IMPERFECT! Collects MAESTRO: WAR AND PAX #1-5.
Collects Maestro (2020) #1-5. The story you’ve waited decades for: the origin of the Maestro! Almost 30 years after the landmark tale FUTURE IMPERFECT, legendary INCREDIBLE HULK scribe Peter David returns to the far-future version of the Hulk — the embittered, tyrannical master of what remains of the world! With astounding art from HULK veteran Dale Keown and up-and-coming talent Germán Peralta, MAESTRO answers questions that have haunted Hulk fans for years — and raises some new ones! How did the world fall and the Maestro rise? What happened to the world’s heroes in between? And where is the Hulk we know and love? Plus: Just how did Rick Jones gather all the weapons and collectibles of his super-heroic generation? As a new rebellion begins, the Maestro’s world will never be the same — and neither will the incredible Hulk!
A harrowing new adventure featuring one of Marvel Comics' most enduring characters. Hounded by the U.S. Army for crimes he did not commit, the Hulk seeks refuge in an experimental procedure that will permanently transform him back to his human incarnation of Dr. Robert Bruce Banner--and be rid of his green-skinned alter ego forever. Chapter opening illustrations.
Collecting Punisher (2018) #1-5. You can take the Punisher out of the War Machine Frank Castle may no longer have the Stark-designed armor, but he has retained his taste for big game criminals and hes hungry for more. But the paths to such high-value targets are fraught with dangers greater than any Frank has faced before, and this lone wolf could use powerful help on his way across the world stage. But a delicate situation gets complicated when Daredevil enters the fray and he wants to put the Punisher down even more than Franks newest foes! Where can the Punisher go from here? The chips are down and hes boxed in but that only makes him more dangerous! Nobody puts Frankie in a corner! Be there for the story that fans will be talking about for years to come!
Louis Passau is America’s greatest living orchestral conductor, a legendary, world-acclaimed artist whose ninetieth birthday will be marked by a glittering celebratory concert at New York’s Lincoln Center. But a double shadow hangs over the event: Passau has recently been accused of spying for Hitler and, worse, the British Secret Intelligence Service have now linked his name to KGB clandestine operations in the USA during the Cold War. The Maestro agrees to be interrogated, but only after the concert. British Intelligence call in Big Herbie Kruger to question the Maestro, and thanks to the once-famous agent-runner Passau survives an assassination attempt in his moment of glory. Still a target, he now insists on dealing only with Kruger, who desperately seeks a safe-house to conduct the debriefing. As he grapples with the elusive truth about the conductor – from the man’s first memories of his Bavarian village, to his adventures as a young immigrant in New York, his experiences in Capone’s Chicago and his ruthless rise to fame and fortune – Herbie Kruger finds himself ensnared in the Maestro’s dangerous secrets and deceits.
From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he’d long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.
“A remarkable book, from its title and subtitle to its last words . . . A stirring indictment of American sentimentality about war.” —Robert G. Kaiser, The Washington Post In Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II, bringing her expertise as a professor of English at West Point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life. She exposes the confusion about American identity that was expressed during and immediately after the war, and the deep national ambivalence toward war, violence, and veterans—all of which were suppressed in subsequent decades by a dangerously sentimental attitude toward the United States’ “exceptional” history and destiny. Samet finds the war's ambivalent legacy in some of its most heavily mythologized figures: the war correspondent epitomized by Ernie Pyle, the character of the erstwhile G.I. turned either cop or criminal in the pulp fiction and feature films of the late 1940s, the disaffected Civil War veteran who looms so large on the screen in the Cold War Western, and the resurgent military hero of the post-Vietnam period. Taken together, these figures reveal key elements of postwar attitudes toward violence, liberty, and nation—attitudes that have shaped domestic and foreign policy and that respond in various ways to various assumptions about national identity and purpose established or affirmed by World War II. As the United States reassesses its roles in Afghanistan and the Middle East, the time has come to rethink our national mythology: the way that World War II shaped our sense of national destiny, our beliefs about the use of American military force throughout the world, and our inability to accept the realities of the twenty-first century’s decades of devastating conflict.
"At the onset of World War II, [Billy] Williams formed Elephant Company and was instrumental in defeating the Japanese in Burma and saving refugees, including on his own 'Hannibal Trek, ' [becoming] a media sensation during the war, telling reporters that the elephants did more for him than he was ever able to do for them"--
Stuart Goldman convincingly argues that a little-known, but intense Soviet-Japanese conflict along the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier at Nomonhan influenced the outbreak of World War II and shaped the course of the war. The author draws on Japanese, Soviet, and western sources to put the seemingly obscure conflict—actually a small undeclared war— into its proper global geo-strategic perspective. The book describes how the Soviets, in response to a border conflict provoked by Japan, launched an offensive in August 1939 that wiped out the Japanese forces at Nomonhan. At the same time, Stalin signed the German—Soviet Nonaggression Pact, allowing Hitler to invade Poland. The timing of these military and diplomatic strikes was not coincidental, according to the author. In forming an alliance with Hitler that left Tokyo diplomatically isolated, Stalin succeeded in avoiding a two-front war. He saw the pact with the Nazis as a way to pit Germany against Britain and France, leaving the Soviet Union on the sidelines to eventually pick up the spoils from the European conflict, while at the same time giving him a free hand to smash the Japanese at Nomonhan. Goldman not only demonstrates the linkage between the Nomonhan conflict, the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, and the outbreak of World War II , but also shows how Nomonhan influenced Japan’s decision to go to war with the United States and thus change the course of history. The book details Gen. Georgy Zhukov’s brilliant victory at Nomonhan that led to his command of the Red Army in 1941 and his success in stopping the Germans at Moscow with reinforcements from the Soviet Far East. Such a strategy was possible, the author contends, only because of Japan’s decision not to attack the Soviet Far East but to seize the oil-rich Dutch East Indies and attack Pearl Harbor instead. Goldman credits Tsuji Masanobu, an influential Japanese officer who instigated the Nomonhan conflict and survived the debacle, with urging his superiors not to take on the Soviets again in 1941, but instead to go to war with the United States.