There are a couple of issues that come up in the comments fairly regularly, so I thought I’d take a moment to address them both here so that I have a convenient way of replying when they come up again.

First, many people ask if any countries besides the US and Germany have super-soldiers. It’s a good question; we have a lot of European readers, and they often want to know how their home country fared in our alternate history. The answer is that no other countries have developed super-soldiers like Die Übermenschen or The Specialists. However, Question Mark is English, and while he doesn’t have any actual super-powers, he is extremely capable. He’s kind of our Batman.

The reasoning for this is that since the Nazis developed their super-soldiers first, they quickly dominated their neighbors in Europe. Aside from the UK, all of Europe is occupied (or allied) with Germany. The Soviets have been locked in an ongoing battle in Stalingrad and Kursk (these are the same battles which, in the real world, helped to turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies). The creation of The Specialists required a huge research effort, which would be impossible to conduct secretly in a Nazi-occupied country.

Another issue that has come up many times is the orientation of the flags on the shoulders of The Specialists’ uniforms. Several people have told us that the union (the stars) of the flag should be towards the soldier’s front, to simulate how it would look if he were carrying a flag into battle, and it was billowing out behind him.

For modern uniforms, these commenters are correct; that is how the flag is oriented, as seen in this picture:

However, this is a fairly recent development. At the time of WWII, flags on uniforms followed the traditional rule of always displaying the union in the upper-left corner, as seen on this replica of a paratrooper’s jacket: