Families of Altered Wars #110by Layla LawlorReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk. Publisher
Credits Grade: 5 I've developed a knee-jerk reaction to this series — I see a copy and I want to immediately throw it to the very bottom of the pile of books to read when I've run out of everything else in the house, including the daily stock reports and the instructions on the bottle of Maalox.However, every now and again the series picks up somewhat. This issue is somewhat more to my tastes than the ones I've read in the past, mostly because instead of having 2 pages each of 20 different stories (I'm exaggerating, but only slightly), it has reasonably large chunks of only 3 different stories. This issue contain "Raumkrieg - Part 6" (about female American pilots during World War II), "Shadow War - Part 6" (in which Earth struggles against some sort of alien invasion), and "Jenin: 2002 - Act 6" (about two brothers of mixed Israeli and Palestinian descent who end up on opposite sides in the conflict). Unfortunately, the last-mentioned series (Jenin: 2002) is the one that most interested me, apparently the one most rooted in the real world rather than fantasy, and it's also the one with the shortest installment, only 6 pages, and most of that being splash pages of tanks and helicopters. I'm pretty sure that readers do not buy Luftwaffe 1946 for the story anyhow. They buy it for the big pretty pictures of different kinds of planes, which, I must admit, are very big and very pretty. I know people who use Luftwaffe 1946 as source material for RPG campaigns, and I imagine that it must appeal to World War II buffs. With this in mind, I find it interesting how dated the art in Luftwaffe 1946 is starting to become. When I first saw this book, several years ago, I remember being completely wowed by the Photoshopped, photorealistic planes. Reading this issue, I realized I can think of a dozen webcomics that do a much better job of integrating computer art, photos and hand-drawn figures. At one time, a Luftwaffe 1946 panel with a computer-rendered Nazi plane sitting in a photograph of a green field was a cool novelty. Nowadays, you see better photomanipulations on fan sites. Nice planes, but damn, the anime-style figures don't even look like they belong in the same series. As usual with this series, I just can't find it in me to recommend this comic. As usual, there are nice drawings of planes, some interesting historical material buried under a slew of alternate-history claptrap (this issue, more emphasis on the alternate history and less on the real history), and occasional snippets of interesting subplots that end on a "To Be Continued" note just when they start to draw me in. If any of this sounds like your cup of tea, then go for it. Written: January 17, 2004
|
|
|
Home |
Features |
Columns |
Culture Vultures |
Report Card
Indicia | Contact | Archives © Sequential Tart, 1998 – 2021 |
