There are a lot of comics out there, but some just stand out head and shoulders above the pack. With “Don’t Miss This” we want to spotlight those series we think need to be on your pull list. This week, we’re taking a look at a new war comic from Aftershock by well known writer Garth Ennis and artist P.J Holden that tells the story of two British officers during WW2 who meet in dire circumstances but manage to overcome their differences and work together to survive the hellish jungle warfare of the Burma front in 1944.
Who Is This By?
Garth Ennis is one of those writers that is well known by a lot of comic book fans and if there are two things that he is well known for they are incredible violence and a dark sense of humor. This is a writer who had one of the most popular runs on the Punisher with “Punisher MAX”, a run that opened with the Punisher mowing down a small army of mobsters with a machine gun and series like “The Boys”, and if you’ve only ever seen the Amazon show all you need to know is that the book is so much more over the top.
However, Ennis has a soft spot for war comics and comics featuring actual mortal beings fighting actual mortal conflicts, so there is no need to worry about excessive and insane violence in “The Lion and the Eagle”, you just have to worry about regular and insane violence.
P.J Holden is the artist on “The Lion and the Eagle” and has done a lot of independent work and is probably most famous for his art on a lot of Judge Dredd books and various other 2000AD titles. On top of that, he has collaborated with Ennis in the past on many other war comics such as “Battlefields”, “World of Tanks: Citadel”, and “The Stringbags” so this is a book created by two creators who know and respect each other writing the kind of stories that are very familiar to both of them.
What’s It All About?
“The Lion and the Eagle” follows a British soldier named Keith Crosby who is a commander in the 11th Sikh regiment stationed in Burma during the Japanese invasion in 1942. He meets a man named Alistair Whitamore who is not a soldier, but a medic trying to take care of the British wounded as the British retreat and regroup in the onslaught of the furious Japanese advance that takes no prisoners and asks for no quarter.
Despite the fact that Keith is a trained soldier who only really cares his duty to Queen and Country while Alistair is a doctor who understands the irony of a white British soldier commanding native Indian forces to protect a British colony from the Imperial Japanese colonizers the two men become friends and prepare to face the horrors of jungle warfare together as the British prepare an offensive in 1944 to retake Burma from the Japanese.
What Makes It So Great?
There are so many reasons to love this book, both from a comic book perspective and a historical perspective.
As a comic “The Lion and Eagle” is part of a long tradition of comic books tackling the brutal and terrifying subject of war. While war comics had their heyday in the 1940’s and early 50’s with legendary artists like Harvey Kurtzman dealing with the trauma and tragedy of conflict, war comics fell by the wayside as moral panic around comic books set in and the medium became more comfortable with colorful superheroes and more child friendly content.
While the genre never really died, it never regained its popularity. However, while characters like Sgt. Rock has kept the fighting spirit alive at places like DC, Garth Ennis has seemingly made it his life’s mission to keep the tradition of brutal, ugly, yet thought provoking war comics alive and thriving. “The Lion and the Eagle” is the latest in a long line of Ennis penned war stories and it’s yet another hit.
From a historical perspective the comic brings some much deserved attention to one of the more obscure theaters of the war and manages to achieve the nearly impossible and make the war interesting again. It’s no small secret that the entertainment landscape is flooded with WW2 themed media, but the Japanese invasion and subsequent British operations in Southeast Asia are a part of the war that never got a lot of attention in any era. Not only is Ennis calling attention to the forgotten heroes of a forgotten battlefield, but he understands that WW2 wasn’t the clear cut good vs. evil fight that so many of us were fed when we learned about it. At the end of the day this was a battle between two imperialist powers fighting over land that didn’t belong to them with both sides committing awful war crimes in the name of freedom and prosperity.
It’s a war book that shows the terror of combat while showing the reader the many different shades of grey that can settle over the wider conflict, which means it’s a book filled with all sorts of themes and ideas that any fan of military history and war comics will enjoy.
How Can You Read It?
The series published its first issue in February of this year and is available wherever comics are sold, so there is plenty of time to get in on the ground floor and add it to your pull box. Also, it is being released in a special prestige format so the book contains 48 large pages for $7.99.
