Russell and Holden revisit WWII in DOG TAG

Mad Cave Studios will publish Dog Tag, a World War II series by writer Mark Russell and artist PJ Holden this summer. A six-issue comic inspired by real events, it tells the story of Tom Fuller, a soldier-journalist on the Western Front in 1945, where “the line between witnessing war and surviving it disappears.”

Dog Tag is a fictional story about a very real war. It follows the life and thoughts of Corporal Tom Fuller through the final year of World War II as his service takes him from the invasion of Normandy to the surrender of Japan. Borrowed from real-world stories and little-known events of the war, Dog Tag asks big questions about the war while focusing on the heroism of the ordinary people who lived and died during the conflict.

Russell states, “Dog Tag is the kind of World War II story I’d always hoped to write. An homage to a grandfather I never knew but who served in the war, a reminder of the consequences of giving a nation over to belligerence and cruelty, and also the re-telling of true but little-known chapters of the war through the eyes of a writer who is worried that no one will believe him when he tells them what the war is really like.”

Holden adds, “Growing up in the ’70s/80s, I was exposed to WWII through a steady stream of War movies, great rollicking adventures, heroic missions, and manly sacrifice. Of course, real war is often nothing like that. Real war is often sacrifices made by scared, tired boys who are barely old enough to be classified as men. I hope from reading this book we can get a sense of the sacrifice required for even a ‘good’ war.”

Issue #1 will be released on May 6, with variant covers by Sebastián Piriz and Erica Henderson. Memorial Day will follow shortly later that month on Monday, May 25. In the meantime, you can check out the variant covers below, and take a look at an interior preview on Mad Cave’s website.