Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders is a World War II comic book published by Marvel Comics.[1] The series lasted for nineteen issues, from January 1968 to March 1970. By issue #9 the name was switched to Captain Savage and his Battlefield Raiders. Created by Gary Friedrich and Dick Ayers, the book was a spin-off of the series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos which they wrote at the time.[2][3] The series was launched when Marvel suddenly received the ability to publish more titles than they had previously due to an embargo.[4]
Sales for the series were decent and a proposal to have a Captain Savage of the Silent Service series as a follow-up was made, with Savage as a submarine commander, but it was not taken up.[5] Pierre Comtois, the author of the book "Marvel Comics in the 1970s" states that the series was an early experiment from Marvel before they realized that the superhero genre would be the one to dominate the comics market in the foreseeable future.[6] Comtois praised Ayers' artwork and described the dialogue as "smooth and natural sounding", also stating that the plot generally moved forward properly without leaving plot threads hanging. Comtois hypothesised that the series was cancelled due to changing societal norms, such as anti-war sentiment, something which affected many war comics at the time.[7]
