World War II A Go-Go
by Paul Pratt on November 17, 2011
Hey Mom,
I’m a sucker for World War II. As a former political science and history major, it’s one of my biggest passions. Because of my creative side, I relish in speculative fiction set within the era too. So when creators take World War II and cram it full of alternative scenarios, weapon systems that never saw the light of day, and ask questions that some might fear to answer, I’m game.
World War II is one of those times in human history that has been mined by every media outlet for stories both real and fictional. There is something about the time period that sparks a certain sense of nostalgia in virtually everyone. Because younger people’s exposure has been through sensationalized video games and movies, the romanticism grows more and more each year. The entire time period feels like a fantasy at his point.
One day I hope that I’ll be able to tell my own World War II story. I have a story that I’m proud of, one that I feel is different, and has the stones to ask questions people have been afraid to ask, let alone answer.
Because of my recent failure in trying to raise money for my first “pro” short film I’ve been looking towards comic books as the next medium I’d like to explore. When talented people bring World War II and comic books together, I’m very interested to see those interpretations. I like to compare and contrast my work to others and see if my work could make the cut. In the last year or so I’ve picked up three series that are set within World War II.
Dust Wars
This is the first series I picked up when I started collecting comic books again. In fact, this series is what brought me back to comics. After picking up the second issue, I began looking through other comic books as I search for the first and third issues across town.
I was aware of Dust when I went hunting for the comic book. I’ve been a fan of model making for some time and stumbled across the world of Dust while researching mechanized walkers for my own project. When I found the property I thought Dust was my dream realized. Somehow Paolo Parente took everything from my mind and made it happen. 
World War II with mechs, more or less, has long been a dream of mine. I opted to buy the comic book because, outside of static models and a few pieces of artwork, there was no story other than the loose descriptions I read on the official website. I wanted to see if this guy had completely beaten me to the punch.
After a month or so I finally got all three issues and read through them in one afternoon. Dust Wars is probably one of the worst comic books I’ve ever read. The dialog is absolutely terrible. The pacing of the book is absolutely terrible. The art is the best part, but it even feels as if corners were cut. Sometimes art can save a book, but not this time. 
Dust Wars reads and looks like a couple of junior high school kids decided to cobble together a comic book.
I’ve followed Paolo Parente’s work since his time on Mutant Chronicles, another obsession of mine, and he is an incredible artist, but he is a tried and true pin-up artist. Dust, and by extension Dust Wars, is no different. Tits, pulp, and action really sums up Dust as a whole. The plot is a silly, treading way to far into the fantasy realm for me and there are zero dramatic stakes that would make anyone give a damn about any of the characters. I’ve since given up on anything Dust.
Iron Siege
Up until right now I’ve not realized what a terrible name Iron Siege is for this comic book. You can probably tell where this is going… but the book is about zombie like ghouls. I understand it’s a siege upon these men by the ghouls, I just don’t understand the iron part. Iron is usually associated with Germany in a World War II context, Iron Cross, Iron Reich, etc. etc. The Germans are the B set of characters in this story, so I’m kind of at a loss.
Like World War II as a whole, I’m a sucker for interesting comic book gimmicks. The understated elegance of Marvel Comic’s blank cover variants are completely awesome to me. I enjoy them more than any of the finished covers they put out. So the Golden Age format to these books was a huge draw. When a comic company does something physically different to a book in this manner, they generally want attention to be drawn to it, they want to indicate the book is special.
The extremely well painted German officer and American Sergeant made the book pop immediately to me on the shelf. Not to mention it had, what I thought, were zombies. I thought “Cool, a World War II zombie book.” So I gave the book a chance and waited until I had all three issues to read it. The book isn’t about zombies, but Ghoul like creatures like I stated above.
A running trend in these books is that the interior art is not even near the quality of the cover art. Obviously due to time, I understand entire books can’t look like their covers. There are deadlines. Like Dust Wars, the interiors look painted, but here in Iron Siege the art looks like it was scribbled out and half realized, kind of like concept art, except shit. There are a few boxes of wonderful renditions, but most just seem like splotches of color are substituted for details. 
No doubt the book is atmospheric, but it just looks rushed rather than artistic.
The book’s story, for all its attempts at creating atmosphere, is the boat anchor. I could have forgiven the art if the story was more engaging, but because there isn’t a lot to hold my interest in the balloons, I get really critical of the art. The story isn’t as laughable or as cheesy as Dust Wars, but the story is lacking the depth between the action scenes I would have liked to have seen.
Operation: Broken Wings, 1936
The last, and most recent book I’ve picked up is Operation: Broken Wings, 1936. Unlike the other books I didn’t wait until I had all three issues before reading. After getting burnt before, I was tired of paying for shoddy material. Unfortunately, I have no damn clue what is going on and I wish I had waited. I hate getting incomplete stories, especially when the story is as incomplete as this one.
This, above the others, seems based in a realistic world, meaning that there is no alien technology, and no zombie like ghouls. The laws of science and physics are firmly planted in known reality, so far anyway. I think it will stay this way, but after two other titles with a loose grasp on reality, I felt I should point it out.
This book deals with the more subtle arts of deception and intelligence gathering. Despite this change from fantasy to more reality, the book can’t help but be slow. It’s not awful; definitely the most interesting out of the bunch, but the book doesn’t firmly given us a reason to care. In fact, the main character comes off as a jerk. His only redeemable quality is that he is a German military man that doesn’t like Hitler. Wow, profound. I’ll probably give the second issue a shot just to see if the story unfolds to my liking.
I picked the book up on the cover again. I really have to stop doing that. But, I believe that in comics covers should really be the judge of the book. I don’t expect the art to be up to the quality of the cover, but I do expect the cover to represent, in some fashion, what the context of the book is. Not the series, but THAT specific book. The cover of Operation: Broken Wings, 1936 is some guy standing in front of a Panzer III or IV. Panzer III’s and IV’s didn’t see service until 1939 so I don’t get it. The tank looks slightly fictionalized too with an odd looking manlet cover. So with that, I’m not 100% certain this is a “realistic” fictional tale… if that makes any sense. I guess we’ll see.
Peter Panzerfaust
I purchased Morning Glories #14 this week and saw a preview for a book called Peter Panzerfaust, another World War II themed tale. From what I’ve read on the internet, the story seems to be a take on the Peter Pan fairy tale. The little press release floating around has all the right ingredients and the creators know how to hook me with their buzzwords. This change to a potentially more whimsical tone in the World War II era is interesting.
Of course I’ll buy the first issue to give it a shot, I just hope it has some depth beyond having a guy and some kids prancing about France, blowing stuff up with shape charges.
Terra Nova or Terra Nowhere
by Paul Pratt on November 7, 2011
Hey Mom,
By now it is no secret that Terra Nova has taken a ratings dump. Their great 3.1 (18-49) opening has now eroded to a 2.1 (18-49) in only five episodes. The hype generated by the massive marketing campaign spurred millions of people to tune in initially, but poor writing and a meandering storyline leave little to be desired. Not even name dropping Steven Spielberg during the previews has kept people from fleeing the show.
The advertised premise of Avatar meets Jurassic Park made for interested audiences. However, the show has fallen extremely flat and none of the implied potential is being delivered. The high concept and high adventure are buried beneath mediocre writing, melodramatic and cheesy dialog, and a focus on boring plot lines before characterization.
There is no direction the story seems ready to take outside of being shit. Terra Nova stinks of the 1990s, right down to the overblown environmental ballyhoo contained within the shows future. The writer’s are taking little risks in anything they pen. Terra Nova needs an injection of planning. Someone needs to chart a damn course and set sail for it. Generally, that is the captain of the ship: the showrunner.
Despite the show’s obvious desire to be a family adventure, a tone shift is required. I’m NOT talking about Battlestar Galactica tone here. My son enjoys Terra Nova, and I want him to be able to watch the show. However, he is ten, and he even knows the show is cheesy. He understands drama, and how it’s supposed to evoke an emotional response. He’s cried and reflected upon games like Halo: Reach, and films like Tron: Legacy. He knows that following people you care about and having them do meaningful and important things sometimes comes with a sacrifice. I’m sure those stories will stay with him forever, but Terra Nova will just be that one dinosaur show that got cancelled after one season. He’ll struggle to remember its name one day in ten years when he is looking up things he watched as a child on Google.
To align the show, the writers need to identify the story thematically. What is the overarching goal we want to reach by the end of at least five seasons? I hate to say it, but every story has to have an ending. No, that doesn’t mean “Terra Nova gonna be a success.” I mean, how did the characters in our story grow and change, and are we, as people, destined to make the same mistakes over and over? Do we deserve a second chance? Does the ability to change things rest solely within us, as individuals, or can anything be undone with enough applied science? The more difficult the questions are to answer, the better the show will be. This will focus the show and give the writers motivation to bring their “A-game.”
The culmination of Terra Nova has been nothing but a gag reel of off screen, Wilhelm Scream style deaths. Each episode, thus far, has been: “Red shirt like guy goes to meaningless outpost and gets eaten by poorly animated dinosaur. Our main character investigates, wackiness ensues, family smiles at the end.” The last episode that turned the show into a procedural was awful because it followed this formula to the letter.
The family moments in the show are sweet, sure, but they come off as cheesy because none of the family was in any real danger at any time. We don’t need the sweet moments because the entire show is already too damn “cutsie.” If our character almost lost his life in a really dramatic situation and then came home and had a cheesy scene, we might be more ok with it.
For instance, the main character connects with a young man introduced a few episodes previous and takes him on as an apprentice deputy due to a high workload of escalating crime in Terra Nova. After a few episodes the deputy gets killed because the main character screwed up. The young guy and the main character had grown close (because main character might feel the growing distance with his real son and perhaps feels the cause is lost to some extent), so he might feel the need to go home and really love up his family and appreciate them.
In three sentences I’ve explored more dramatic territory than 60 minutes of an episode. The dad is questioning his own ability to bring his son closer to him, and the son, in turn, will go further away. The young man could have been like the main character’s son previously, but lost his own father and wants to make things right, the opposite of the main character’s situation. The botched investigation wouldn’t have anything to do with dinosaurs (gasp!), but people working in the shadows, further sullying who is on the lines of good and evil. When the young guy dies, the Dad wants to get closer to his son, who is probably too far-gone to care anymore. This leads to the father taking on a few character flaws as he spirals into guilt and tries to wrestle with doing the right thing.
What if one of the pilgrimages was lost? No supplies and no ammo for a few months? Those are tough times. Maybe the boy’s girlfriend was on the pilgrimage. Perhaps we can explain why the female second-in-command is still a damn Lieutenant in whatever poorly defined military branch is running this joint?
I’m spit balling. I can’t even remember the main character’s name. That is how much I care after five episodes.
The characters have no histories outside of what may facilitate the plot for one episode. We’ve learned nothing to very little of them, and because of that they are ridged, two dimensional, cardboard cut-outs that have no emotions other than what the actors may attempt to bring to them from their own personalities.
The path to rebuilding the characters after bending and ultimately breaking them emotionally, and sometimes physically, is what causes an audience to care. Not dinosaurs eating the worthless extra every week. There are smart writer’s pushing their characters to the limits on other networks. It doesn’t matter if the characters are fighting zombies, skirting prohibition laws, or playing political games in a fantasy realm. At the end of the day the characters are what make us tune in week after week, not the plot.
Terra Nova is a great idea and filled with numerous possibilities, but falls into the same timid space as Jericho did many years ago. In Jericho, we suffered a nuclear apocalypse and the townsfolk celebrate Halloween in one of the first six episodes. What the hell? Where is the drama? We are overflowing with dialog and action that would fill an afternoon soap opera. There is no impact, no stakes, nothing to push our colony or characters to the brink. This is why ratings decline. No one gives a damn.
