Monday 13 September 2010

Weird War Tales #1: Review

Weird War Tales #1
Written by Darwyn Cooke, Ivan Brandon, Jan Strnad
Art by Darwyn Cooke, Nic Klein, Gabriel Hardman, Steve Pugh

Valhallahan
A few things led me to picking up titles, one is my love of the old Weird War Tales issues that I've picked up from bargain bins over the years and another being the overall concept: Eerie short stories set in wartime, with optional moral message. Like any given issue of Weird War Tales, I was expecting it to be a -wait for it- mixed bag(winner of 2010 award for Valhallahan's most over-used phrase). Thus it was but sadly it was a mixture of 4 good pages and a load of crap. The anthology features, as ever, a themed representation of Death, and as drawn by Steve Pugh, it is positively tattoo worthy. This one page is by far and away the highlight of the book, but at the same time it lacks the charm of Death's previous Weird War Tales incarnations.

Another of the major selling points of this issue is the presence of Darwyn Cooke, something which played no small part in my purchase of said periodical. Well, Cooke fans prepare to be disappointed! There are like, 3 pages from Cooke and it's a fun but very silly skit about dead military leaders in Hell. Enjoyable, but nothing to spend $3.99 on by any stretch. In fact there's little or nothing to justify that price tag for such a mediocre effort.

I haven't really mentioned the other two stories in the book, because quite frankly they're not worth mentioning. Not shit, but so ho-hum I'm struggling to remember what they were about a day after reading.

Two boring anecdotes on the bus out of a possible lock-in with some drunken veterans. Save your money for '70s back issues or buy the '90s Vertigo version(runner up in the 2010 award for Valhallahan's most over-used phrase).

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