Comic Review: The War

The War
by Garth Ennis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Originally published in Hello Darkness comics (and in Vol 1 & 2 collected trade paperbacks), I’ll admit I read War awhile back in parts; it gutted me then and today, re-reading it in its entirety cover to cover in this fully collected edition, I found it just as heart wrenching as the first time. Even knowing what happens, why Ennis is telling the story (to deter nuclear war!), and being wholly prepared for the horror I still put this down and went ‘damn’. The War is a bleak, honest look at scenarios experience by a group of friends (who all go different ways) knowing their city is about to be hit with the bomb.

The War is terrifying in its realism, lovingly tearful with genuine love, and all around horrific in how the world ends. If you are looking for happy endings you will find none here. And yet I love it. It’s sooo well done, and hits me (twice now) so hard that I can’t help but want to experience the genuine emotion on the page again and again. I believe, only the unique medium of a comic, with both words and art, could really bring this kind of a story to a place where you can’t help but flip the pages as you gasp, cry, and whimper at everything seen and heard.

Truly a masterpiece of storytelling and one I hope to only ever experience via printed media. At the end of it all this is a warning, a reminder of what fallout and an apocalypse really looks like. There’s no heroes to save you here, no obvious villains to blame; just the sheer stupidity of the human race and our (seemingly) rush to destroy ourselves and our planet. I want to both recommend AND warn everyone away from this shocking masterpiece. May we all, no matter our power, class, race, sexuality, or politics hope (pray?) we (and everyone who comes next) never EVER see a future of this kind.

While NetGalley and BOOM! Studios provided me an eARC (and this is an unbiased and honest review); I’ll confess that I already owned the single edition comics and trade paperbacks this was first published in.

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