Comic Book Robot of the Month: G.I. Robot Joe

You may remember the G.I. Robot named J.A.K.E. from Weird War Tales in the late 70s and early 80s, but did you know that he had a predecessor? For 3 issues of Star Spangled War Stories (#101-#103), a Corporal named Mac was assigned a partner; a 'robot buddy' named Joe. For some reason, the team of 'Mac & Joe' didn't stick around like many of the other DC war groups. It's too bad, as it held a lot of promise and there weren't many comics with human/robot interaction in the early 60s. I guess the editors at DC felt that combination of dinosaurs, robots and Axis villains was simply too much of a good thing to cram into a single strip. Perhaps Joe has been retconned into the current DCU (I haven't done a panel by panel review of Crisis or Zero Hour to check), but otherwise it seems to me that Joe was the G.I. Robot that Time Forgot.