The War that Time Forgot was created by writer/editor Robert Kanigher and artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito in Star Spangled War Stories #90. They continued to compose most of the stories during the comic's run. During its time, it was the main feature of the title. The title and some of the premises might have been influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot, in which soldiers and sailors of World War I are stranded on a dinosaur-haunted land in the Antarctic. The protagonists of the early adventures were not usually recurring, but a few of them appeared more than once. Among them are two soldiers named Larry and Charlie, the airborne brothers Henry, Steve and Tommy Frank a.k.a. ”The Flying Boots”, early prototypes of the G.I. Robot members of the original Suicide Squad, sailors PT and Prof and the flying ace called "The Brother With No Wings". The series ran in Star Spangled War Stories from issue #90 to issue #137. The final story was in the Feb-March 1968 issue of Star Spangled War Stories, afterwards, the Enemy Ace, a German World War I pilot, became the focus of the book and the dinosaur plotline was retired. In 1973, some of these stories were reprinted in Four Star Battle Tales #3 and G.I War Tales issues #1 and #2. The War That Time Forgot re-appeared in the October 1976 issue of G.I. Combat, featuring the Haunted Tank. In the 1980s, DC briefly revisited The War that Time Forgot in a run as one of the features in Weird War Tales. During the series run inWeird War Tales, Dinosaur Island was visited by the Creature Commandos and the G.I. Robot. This was the World War II version of the Commandos. Dinosaur Island was also featured in Tim Truman's 1998 four-issue mini-series, Guns of the Dragon. The 1920s set mini-series provided sort of an origin story for the island. In Darwyn Cooke's 2003 alternate-universe mini-series , Dinosaur Island was revisited yet again as part of its opening prelude. Here, it is visited by the military team known as The Losers. In May 2008Bruce Jones launched The War that Time Forgot as a 12-issue limited series, featuring the Enemy Ace, Firehair and Tomahawk on one side and the Golden Gladiator, the Viking Prince and the G.I. Robot on the other.
Collections
A DC Showcase Presentsblack and whitetrade paperback collection, The War that Time Forgot Volume One, was published in 2007. It reprints stories that originally appeared between 1960 and 1966. The 2008 series was collected in two volumes.
