PARTISAN

The potential of the medium

Comics, or graphic novels if you prefer, look so simple. Words and pictures. Everybody thinks they can create a comic. And everybody does. Few realize the potential of the medium. Maybe ten per cent. Partisan, by Garth Ennis and Steve Epting, is the best graphic novel I’ve read. It’s about World War II, the fight on the Eastern Front, when German troops advanced to the outskirts of Stalingrad.

I’ve read Ennis before. Mostly Punisher. Ennis approaches the concept of superheroes with a chary eye. Look at The Boys. But when he writes about World War II, and especially the Eastern Front, he takes his job seriously. This first hand account of a young mother plunged into the struggle begins with German troops rolling through her town. Her husband has left to join the resistance leaving her with two young children. Her voice is measured and assured, even when recounting the most grotesque atrocities. Epting’s art brings everything alive, from scenes of death and suffering that would gag a dog off a gut wagon to breathtaking images of bombers soaring over the countryside. Gone are the days of imagining German bombers and tanks out of the whole cloth. Epstein’s drawings are accurate. The rendering is breathtaking. It’s not the peculiar comic art esthetic we enjoy in stylists like Berni Wrightson, Todd McFarlane, or Sam Kieth. It’s the real thing.

Some of these images are difficult to absorb. The double-page spread of naked victims, Jewish I would guess, standing in a pit they were forced to dig surrounded by Waffen SS just before they are gunned down. Ennis and Epting don’t shy away. This graphic novel is as disturbing as Scorsese’s Silence or The Sorrow and the Pity. Aleksandra’s encounter with a writer of children’s books is as bleak as the freezing forest through which they walk. Every word rings true. Aleksandra’s a realist doing what she must to keep her family alive. Difficult choices. The characterizations of the Nazis and the resistance ring true. It’s more powerful than Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which dealt with the Holocaust through the eyes of funny animals. Because it was easier tell the story that way.

It’s a long book. It took me several days to read. Publishers should number the pages. What’s the problem? Partisan is as rich and dense as a good novel. The art commands your attention. You stare at these images because they’re real. The story is real. There’s blood but it’s not overly gory. It doesn’t have to be. Dialogue and images combine to create one of the most powerful examples of graphic literature ever published.

Wolfpack is publishing my Biker novels one by one. This is modern noir. John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee is my inspiration. Josh Pratt is a reformed motorcycle hoodlum who went to prison, found God, and gets out determined to turn his life around. Some of the stories have to do with bikers but most do not.

We will launch Bronze Star 2 on Kickstarter in April. We would have launched sooner but fulfillment of the massive Nexus Omnibus took longer than we thought. Kickstarter says only one project at a time.

As always, you can find all my books at bloodyredbaron.com