Written by Kurtis Wiebe
Illustrated by Tyler Jenkins“THE GREAT ESCAPE,” Part One
The city of Calais is the first city in France to fall to the Germans in the spring of 1940. A mysterious American boy named Peter rallies a handful of plucky French orphans and they must work together to survive Europe’s darkest hour.
From the writer of the critically acclaimed GREEN WAKE and THE INTREPIDS comes a new ongoing series: PETER PANZERFAUST, a high energy action story that blends Red Dawn with Peter Pan.
To begin with a cool brag, I currently have a paper on J.M. Barrie’s eternally young character pending for a children’s literature conference. So when one of the biggest new names in creator-owned comics decides to put out a comic inspired by the boy who never grew up, do you think I wouldn’t be interested in checking it out? I didn’t think so.
Check out some thoughts on the first issue of Peter Panzerfaust, out next week, after the cut.
At a cursory glance, it seems like writer Kurtis Wiebe just doesn’t get it. Peter Pan is the boy who wouldn’t grow up – how could he possibly fit into the battlefield of World War II? The name of the protagonist, his “lost boys” – it all seems like superficial decoration designed to flash bulbs of recognition in the minds of the reader, when really there’s nothing at all Peter Pan-ian, if you’ll excuse the term, about the comic.
That is, of course, only at a cursory glance. A closer look at even just this first issue reveals that Wiebe isn’t just transplanting ideas and themes from J.M. Barrie’s masterpiece of children’s literature, but that he is updating those themes for a society with wholly different views on lifespan development.
When Barrie originally introduced Peter Pan – through a short story within a novel, then a play, and then an entirely different novel – he was writing for a portion of society that was obsessed with the eternal child. The idea was commonly held that children were perfect innocents, and that as we grew older we slowly lost that immaculate quality (though whether or not Barrie himself believed this is an entirely different matter). We can assume, then, that the Peter of Peter Panzerfaust would not at all be considered akin to Peter Pan by Barrie’s turn-of-the-century audience. He is an adult, despite his youth, placed within the middle of a war, searching for his lost love amid the battle, and he even kills a few people himself – not by bloodless swashbuckling, but in actual urban combat with real soldiers. He is, by the very definition of the word, “grown-up.”
And yet, he isn’t; our society has developed a deep cynicism toward the romantic, and this Peter is exactly that. To him, the war is an adventure, something to smile about, and he has thrust himself in it to pursue aforementioned lost love. By our society’s standards, many would still say that he is not mature, that he hasn’t grown up, and may even label him a child. It’s an intricate twist on the Peter Pan story, and one that is certain to play out in an interesting manner.
The script itself is solid. The framing device of one of the former Lost Boys recounting his experience allows for a recurring narrative voice, but Wiebe avoids intruding on the action too much – the narrator only pops in when appropriate. The dialogue seems very natural, and Wiebe is sure to avoid that one pet peeve of many comic readers: Not once is there “too much” dialogue during an action sequence. When the boys are running from Nazi fire, they only have the time to let loose a few stray exclamations, and Wiebe’s script reflects this. And, like everything else I’ve seen from Wiebe, the pace is impeccable. The first chase scene doesn’t need to be any longer or shorter than it is; our attention is held just as long as it is needed. The deliberation when the boys are stuck on a roof is long enough to increase the tension, but not so long that the reader gets bored. You get the picture.
Continued belowIn regards to the writing, there is only one thing that bothers me about this first issue, and that is the way it ends. These are slight spoilers so I’ll dance around it a bit, but I think I see what Wiebe is trying to do here: the introduction of one of Peter Pan’s iconic characteristics is meant to add a bit of pizzaz to the cliffhanger ending. Earlier, we saw Peter “flying,” and now we see the appearance of another Pan trademark. The problem is that the cliffhanger seems to be the introduction of this trademark itself, rather than a natural result of the narrative. Rather than asking “What’s going to happen next issue?” the reader is left thinking “Now what?” I know that seems like I’m splitting hairs, but as is, it seems like there’s a page or two missing from the comic itself, rather than a “To Be Continued…” across the bottom. That’s a minor gripe, though, and I will be interested in seeing if and how issue #2 picks up directly where this one left off or not.
Artist Tyler Jenkins has a very unique style going for him in this book. His lines are, for the most part, on the thin side – leaving plenty of negative space – and change from loose to rigid and back to loose again. At the same time, his pages do tend to have large spots of ink strewn across them, outlined in the same shifting manner as his thinner lines. There’s a very marked contrast going on in each panel, and I’d love to see how his illustrations for this book looked before being colored. Not that his coloring is bad, in any way, shape, or form; it just has this smooth look to it that doesn’t quite fit with the more (appealingly) jarring pencils. It might look a bit better were the palette reduced, especially when it comes to gradients, but I’m no artist. If Jenkins loves what he’s doing and sticks to it, I doubt that I’m going to stop buying Peter Panzerfaust.
I’ve said before that I’m a bit prejudiced toward first issues, but this new series is off to a solid start. The ending might have disappointed me a bit, but at the same time it just makes me wish I had the second issue on hand already. Tricky maneuver, guys. Wiebe has yet another solid creator-owned title under his belt, but I’m particularly interested in seeing where artist Tyler Jenkins ends up in the future. Until then, though, I’ll be content with getting my fix from both of these guys on a monthly basis through Peter Panzerfaust.
Final Verdict: 8.1 – Buy it!
