In Abandoned an' Forsaked, we examine comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent).
Today, we look at the strange paternal history of Mademoiselle Marie.
I wrote about Mademoiselle Marie's original run in Star-Spangled War Stories a while back, specifically the time that Mort Drucker was drawing the feature.
However, there were other stories with Marie that Drucker did not draw, including Marie's debut in Star-Spangled War Stories #84 by Robert Kanigher and Jerry Grandenetti.
In that story, Marie is the contact person on the ground for a paratrooper commando who is sent to blow up a bridge deep in Occupied France. He is shocked that the MM he is supposed to work with stands for Mademoiselle Marie...
Marie takes him back to her home base where the rest of her French Resistance comrades are, but it has tragically been attacked and all the other members of her crew are dead, including her own father...
Naturally, Marie pushes on and they succeed in their mission...
Four years after the Mademoiselle Marie feature ended, Marie featured in a bonkers Brave and the Bold story in Brave and the Bold #52 (by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert) that saw three of the main war comics features team-up, with Marie as the connective tissue of the crossover. However, she was in a very strange circumstance at the time. It is SO bizarre that I'm going to do a whole other article just on how bizarre her story was in that issue, so for now, I will censor the following page, only to note that Marie's father sacrifices his life to allow Marie and Johnny Cloud to get away...
Quite a trick for a guy who died four years earlier!
Roughly another four years later, Marie teamed up with the gang from the Haunted Tank feature in G.I. Combat #127 (by Kanigher and Kubert) and
And they turn out to be on their way to a mission to rescue a scientist, who happens to be Marie's father!
When they rescue him, he hilariously mentions never thinking he'd be alive to see her again...
They escape alive and I suppose it is fair to say that for Mademoiselle Marie's fathers, the third time was the charm!
If anyone else has a suggestion for a future Abandoned an' Forsaked, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!