Men of War

"Yo dawg, I heard you like contrived stories, so I put contrived stories in your contrived stories so you can read contrived stories while you read contrived stories. "

"Men of War", DC's most recent stab at reviving war comics, has every war-story trope you can imagine. Enlisted men disrespecting officers! Enlisted men not wanting to get promoted! Battlefield promotions! This comic has them all, for the low, low price of 3.99! Which is way too much.

Now, any good review should have a decent summary of the comic. Not sure I can give you one here. I think this comic was about soldiers having to flush out insurgents. Somewhere in the Middle East, though they never actually say where. Also, when we see the insurgents, they are all wearing uniforms and berets, with close cropped or no facial hair. This, to me, says they are an actual military or police force, but hey, I'm not the writer of this abortion of a comic. In the midst of this battle, our soldiers encounter a superpowered being, who crashes the fight, knocking shit over for a few pages. There's also a back-up story about Navy SEALs trying to find a sniper in a crowded city (an unidentified city, to help ground the reader in FUCKING NOTHING). It ends with a laugh-out-loud last page, where a terrorist who looks like a cartoon version of Osama bin Laden is hiding behind a young girl.

What creators have to share the blame here? The lead story was by writer Ivan Brandon. Brandon's been one of the very few homegrown talents that DC has attempted to develop over the last few years. In stark contrast to Marvel, who have a nice pack of developing writers, DC has almost nothing but superstars or complete no-names. Based on this comic, Brandon, much like a nice soup, needs more time to develop complex flavor. His co-conspirator, Tom Derenick, doesn't get to use the same excuse. He's been floating around DC for years, doing terrible fill-ins when editorial clearly doesn't have a plan for a book. To put him on a first issue, that's meant to attract readers to a series, is bullshit. The back-up story had different creators, but I can't write about this comic anymore without getting feline AIDS.

Buying the next issue: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

New reader friendly: Sure, it's as accessible as any piece of crap action movie with zero talent or heart.