The unworthy offspring - War of the Worlds: Goliath

We are getting back to the War of the Worlds franchise a bit. I have to make up for an old debt of mine. I try to focus  on relatively fresh alternate history/historical fiction material and reviews more and more on these pages, and the War of the Worlds: Goliath of 2012 borderline qualifies that criterion. This is an anime made by Americans, actually. Admittedly, I made only brief trips into the anime world yet. According to my limited cinematic experience, the message and the story of Japanese animes with a Japanese topic are a little hard to grasp onto. It doesn’t work for me either when they try to touch Western history. This happened to me when I was watching the Steamboy anime.

War of the Worlds. Yes, we have been here before. Tripods surrounded with clouds of poison gas, vaporizing death ray, bloodsucking aliens from Mars, red weed, and the glorious Earth bacteria, you name it. The War of the Worlds: Goliath is an interesting anime adaptation of the original H.G. Wells novel. A historical fiction work with steampunk elements, or more like a pseudo-sequel of the original. 

The plot takes place fifteen years later after the original Martian invasion of 1899 and tells a story about a second attack. The anime refers back to the first invasion with beautiful pictures in the intro. Not a single word is told, but none is needed, they are telltale and plastic, completely functional from a dramaturgical point of view. I’m afraid we have just touched the most valuable parts of the movie already.

Fifteen years ago, faceless invaders from the hell of deep space commited genocide against humanity. Now it's time for a rematch.

World War One has been just postponed

It’s not like the story writers didn’t have some good ideas. Placing an international elite military squad into the age of ultra-nationalism was a daring and promising attempt to get my attention. The respective national consciousnesses of the age were absolute and look incredibly competitive nowadays. I mean, grade school children were taught to verse warmonger poems about exterminating each other, not to mention the racial theories. The Martian invasion changed the Earth of this alternate universe forever, of course. Still, a multi-racial strike force against the aliens promised a lot of interesting interaction between the team members. 

The Goliaths of the human battleline. A lot of effort went into the promotion of the anime.

Somebody said explosions…?

There are some, but I wasn’t satisfied. The main reason for this that the storywriters had settled for a Michael Bay-ish visual orgy with pasteboard characters and action movie cliches. I consider Bay as the apostle of the cinematic equivalent of sleep-denying torture.  He doesn’t use the story to keep your attention but every tricks of visual compulsion. Release me- you are screaming internally. I broke halfway on Transformers 2 and wept.

It's not like the Martians didn't make some improvements.

The War of the Worlds: Goliath is not that bad, but it’s not far off either. Japanese stories are maybe a bit hard to digest, or I’m just lacking the required sensitivity and cultural background to grasp them. Maybe it’s just the different strokes, but the real trainwreck is when Western creators utilize a fashionable template (in this case, the anime-style) to produce a cliched animated action movie. I’m afraid that the War of the Worlds: Goliath is not really more than that. 

Again, much effort into the design and visuals of Goliath. No argument there.

Don’t get me wrong, our nine year old kids will be charmed. But for me, The Great Martian War 1913-1917 had more entertainment value, despite it’s nowhere close to the visuals of the Goliath with its cheap manipulated historical footage and fake interviews. Too much effort into the visuals, too less into the story, that’s why I consider War of the Worlds: Goliath as a failure. H.G. Wells deserves more.

The Royals: Masters of War

When superheroes and the world wars get into the same context somehow, most buffs will associate to the Golden Age of Comic Books. Pictures like Batman hunting for nazi saboteurs in America or Superman wrestling enemy submarines come to my mind. These ancient popular entertainment pieces may strike us as naive and caricature-like, but they just reflected to the spirit of their age. Who knew that very late descendants of these patriotic comic books still appear in our days. The Royals: Masters of War is a six-part historical fiction comics adventure, which takes us back in the time of the biggest crisis of England in the 20th century. 

On these pages, the Battle of Britain is joined by the members of the British Royal Family, and superhero-abilities flow in the blue blood. This post is a review of the first two published episodes.

Hitler and Tojo are in trouble. Mr. pants on the outside of the 40s is teaching them a lesson (and doesn’t forget to encourage you to buy war bonds).

What is in the blue blood?

 

In this alternate universe, flowing royal blood in your veins means having superhuman abilities, those were the source of the power of your ancestors. This power became title and was inherited generation after generation. The superhuman ruling class guarded the purity of its noble bloodline carefully for a reason and kept the newcomers out. This marriage practice lead to interbreeding and the unavoidable mental and physical degeneration. The exhausting and costly Great War had shattered the people’s confidence in the traditional ruling classes and social order. Several ancient royal dynasties like the Romanovs or Habsburgs fell victim to this turmoil.

The East End in Flames. The Blitz, London, 1940.

The British Royal Family: The House of Windsor had chosen to lay low and withdrew from public life. The heirs were declared as powerless for the public, and the king forbid them to use their powers ever again. The Windsors would have kept living their decadent lifes on taxpayers’ money and would have filled the pages of tabloids all right if the Second World War hadn’t happened.

The king returns and seizes the skies (SPOILER)

 

The young and naive blond prince Henry cannot stand the carnage outside and  the suffering of the common people anymore. Instead of distributing tea and some blankets in a bomb shelter, he enters the raging battle above his own home, like his ancestors did in the  times of peril. In a very early part of the storyline, we will meet a serious character flaw of his, but it only makes the prince and the plot more interesting. By the way, the story itself doesn’t follow the historical family tree of the Windsors; the names and characters are different.

When I’m writing these words, yet only two parts of the six were published, but I can tell that the major theme is the superhuman escalation of World War Two. The pictures are beautiful, not Jim Lee- or The Red Star-beautiful but they are pleasant to look at. The Royals: Masters of War comics come with the promise of being extraordinary. Superheroes and the old royal dynasties are a daring but ingenious combination (bloody hell, after the magic-enchanted Soviet empire, I’m laissez faire on the subject…), and I’m really looking forward to the next episodes.

The pictures were taken from the resptective pages of The Royals: Master of War #1-2. Written by: Rob Williams. Artist: Simon Coleby. Publisher: Vertigo Comics

Tripods on No Man’s Land – The Great Martian War 1913-1917

Are you familiar with The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells? If not, that is something you have missed. This novel from 1897 is one of the first modern science fiction works and the Holy Grail of the alien invasion genera. H.G Wells, the author, was the Michael Crichton of his day, a real visionary, who fused the invasion literature with the alien element and introduced the total war, a too familiar characteristic of the 20th century conflicts. In time, this forever classic had inspired many followers, and the War of the Worlds became a franchise of popular culture. New adaptations, homages, incarnations continue to appear in our days. In this post, we will take a look at one of the latest examples: The Great Martian War 1913-1917 documentary.

War and remembrance

The Great Martian War 1913-1917 is a 90 minutes long, made-for-television pseudo-documentary, a historical fiction which recalls the events of an alternate First World War like it did happen in our own reality hundred years earlier. To create this pseudo-reality, The Great Martian War uses manipulated and mashed-up historical footage, fake retrospections of surviving witnesses, and so on. 

A deadly and dreaded weapon once, now a museum piece

This time, the scriptwriters did not really more than they transposed the story from the Victorian era and adapted it in a World War One environment. The arrival of the aliens is a shocking event, and the European nations must set aside their growing differences to avoid complete extermination in this struggle. The trenches in North-West Europe are filled with millions of dreading men. These people desperately try to check the alien war machine with their rifles, horse drawn artillery and early biplanes. 

Going over the top

Numerous historical events like the Christmas of 1914, the Somme offensive, chemical warfare, America’s isolatism, the tank attack at Cambrai, the Spanish flu, etc., were reused in the plot. As a matter of fact, we can just replace the alien term with the Germans from World War One. The script doesn’t really help to understand how the conventional armies of humanity manage to hold the line against the seemingly unstoppable, faceless conquerors with heat-rays and energy shields for three years, and we won’t know anything about the fate of Austro-Hungary and Imperial Russia – another major military powers of that age.

What the writers did really catch a hold of is how the contemporary people percept the aliens, for example, how they struggle with the concept of artificial intelligence. Other big bonus point for this work are the visuals. The alien machines roaming on No Man’s Land on day and night are a creepy sight, and their attack drones doing disturbing things with the soldiers with their tentacle-like manipulators raise our innermost fears. 

At the beginning of the understanding

The plot contains several really good ideas, and some turn of events staggered even a seen-a-lot on screen guy like me. The endgame and the development of the conflict hold thought-provoking surprises, and instead of a catharsis, we will face another horizon of war and conflict, and we won’t even know who the real enemy is.

These were the positive points for the story. But I can’t get over the feeling that the war story part could have been a lot better if the scriptwriters had just worked on it a bit longer. The already mentioned West-centered storyline is another heartache of mine. The Great Martian War 1913-1917 is a faithful adaptation of The War of the Worlds, but it’s good for one view only, not more and not less.

Pickelhaube against the Union blue - 1901

This time, we visit a different era. The turn of the 19th-20th century was the golden age of what we have called imperialism today. Also, the same period was the middle of a diplomacy rampage with which the German Kaiser II. Wilhelm pissed off or alienated almost all major powers and possible Allies. The measure of success in this global pissing contest was the possessing of overseas colonies, the grabbing of land and market on the few still white spots or from each other. In other words, everybody wanted to build an empire and did that in the name of a civilisation mission, which was often the globalized projection of respective national agendas and the big money behind them. Robert Conroy's alternate history novel, 1901 describes a mindblowing what if scenario from this age.

 

The modern history of the United States and the German Empire met at many spots. They both had had to establish a national unity before they entered the aforementioned global playground. It took four years of bloody civil war to preserve the Union, and the decades of reconstruction work absorbed the conquering energies of the USA. For the German unification, the Prussians had to fight their way through the armies of France and the Habsburg Empire. Both fresh predators took their first steps outside their natural hunting grounds at about the same time.  The USA declared Central- and South America offlimits for European colonialism in her Monroe Doctrine, which interfered with the Pan-Germanism and the economic interests of Imperial Germany in the aforementioned areas. 

"George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganyika.    I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the imperialistic front"

With the defeating of Spain in 1898 and acquiring of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, the USA became a major player outside the continent. This was something the German Empire was thirst for, but never really accomplished. The USA could control the major shipping routes to both American continents from her freshly acquired bases. II. Vilhem tried to purchase at least some of the US spoils, but the Americans were no sellers. One reason of the German failure was the lack of modern ocean-going warships and refueling bases in the Pacific. The land-grabbing efforts of German warships by the Philippines were frustrated by the more formidable American fleet. If latecomers like Imperial Germany wanted to be somebody in this gallery of colonialist bullies, he had to beat up one of the smaller kids in the sandbox and take his lunch money first.

Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of the German navy

The German and American fleet building program started at about the same time. By 1901, the opposing battlefleets had comparable strengths, there was clear point of conflict. The USA became one of the potential war opponents of the German Empire, even war plans were made just for case. The attack on the US soil or one of her interests was the brainchild of the Kriegsmarine. The intended target was Puerto Rico, where the German Navy wanted to lure out and destroy the American battlefleet, then force a peace treaty upon the Americans with obvious territorial demands and „compensation” of war expenses. 

The plans went as far as the proposed invasion of New England, the economic and financial center of the USA, but the Army refused to be part of such risky amphibious operation on the other side of the Atlantic. The „Winterarbeiten” papers had sunk silently in the depth of the archives and didn’t reappear until 1971, when curious researchers stumbled upon them.

"The vile Hun and his villainous empire-building"

This is the point of deviation where history takes a different turn in Robert Conroy’s 1901. This time, the Germans decide  go for it, actually, and capture Manhattan and Long Island with a daring amphibious operation. 1901 is the very first alternate history novel of Robert Conroy, which explores how a fictional war between Imperial Germany and the USA would have happened. The German invasion of New England takes the Americans by surprise. The regular army is still busy at pacifying the Philippines, and the Navy is likewise scattered around the globe.

The goal of II. Wilhelm is to win a decisive battle against the American battlefleet, defeat land counterattacks, and force a peace treaty upon the US wherein Washington surrenders his oversesa possessions to Germany, pays an enormous indemnity, and does not rebuild its Navy.  This was the civilized way of war; some big battles until somebody says uncle, and the chaffering restarts at the peace conference table. The problem is that the USA did fight a total war 40 years earlier, and doesn’t seem to follow the European playbook.

The Kaiser Wilhelm II, one of the nine then modern ocean-going battleships of the Kriegsmarine in 1901. Wikipedia.

The opposing forces in this scenario are fairly asymetrical. On sea, the two battlefleets are close to each other in strength. We are talking about the pre-Dreadnought era here; the battleships facing each other became second or third rate vessels by World War One, and the respective ship classes missed Jutland or any major naval action. But in 1901, they are state of art, and instead fading into obscurity, they engage in the biggest naval battle since Trafalgar on these very pages. At first, I found the number of German ocean-going vessels excessive, but if the Russians could sail their coast defence barges from the Baltic to the Tsushima Strait four years later, then why the hell not?

The rival from the other side, the battleship USS Alabama

Last shell? Last man? Last foot of ground? Last Germ?

On land, the Americans have the numbers, but National Guard and State Militia units are nowhere comparable to the Prussian war machine. The soldiers in the piked helmets carry the newest bolt-action Mauser rifles, whereas the boys in blue start this war with the Civil War breech-loading muskets. In real life, the German military staff had a very low opinion about the military virtues of the Americans; they described the Civil War as two armed mobs chasing each other for four years, whereas the Prussian army soundly defeated his continental opponents in weeks. Well, it doesn’t turn out like that in the book otherwise it would be a short entertainment. The situation of the German expeditionary force kinda reminded me the Crusades, where the Western knights were doomed to sink into the ocean of Arabs. 

 

Robert Conroy describes siege and partisan warfare, propaganda, the case of German-speaking immigrants, token naval actions in 1901. Some turns of events are upright hilarious but very entertaining. Reactivated military leaders of the US will come from surprising places and with a colourful past. These antediluvian generals have just one more war before they will meet their past comrades and answer them how could they change the grey with blue after the cause had been lost. They might refer to the enemy as Yankees sometimes, but that is entirely forgiveable. The other hilarious plot element is how the author likes to kill off historical, famous and infamous big shots in a very early stage of their careers.

 

Robert Conroy’s 1901 lost no entertaining value since its first appearance in 1991. Most things I have told about Red Inferno by the same author can be applied here. The only major flaw I found that the novel is short. It’s not a hardcore alternate history work, but for casuals like me it was very enjoyable. In fact, I found it so good and easy to read that I will definitely come back with a review about Robert Conroy’s more recent works because the good man is still in business.

And about those two "armed mobs"...

Ensign of freedom - The Red Star

Spirituality and the history of the modern Russia are an odd combination. In retrospective, the event that really shook the globe in the 20th century was bolshevist coup or the Great October Socialist Revolution by its flashier name. Whatever we call it, this new order renounced the old faith, it banished gods and started to build its own heaven on Earth at any cost. On the ruins of its feudal and denied predecessor a man-eating empire emerged. One thing didn’t change, the Party carefully guarded the beliefs of its subjects. The new ruling class preserved the siege-mentality, which had come into being after many foreign invasions in the previous centuries. The historical fiction universe of The Red Star starts the liberation.

 

What is behind an empire?

The Red Star comics cast magic and spirituality, advanced technology, the grandiosity of the now deceased communist empire into an unique blend. It’s not some weird Post-Soviet romanticism, which is still hungry for the glory of the past. The storyline is full of historical symbols. The Red Star revisits the essence of Russian history; the relation of people and the power through a magic-enchanted mirror. It does this through incredibly powerful poetic and real pictures.

 

Warfare in the fourth dimension

 

Just like its real world counterpart, The Red Star’s empire broke in a long and desperate war on a land, where the inhabitants - driven by different and incomprehensible beliefs - just didn’t know the meaning of giving up. This battlefield expands into the spiritual world: the soul energies of the deceased fuel warfare, the ghosts tempered into weapons engage the still living and each other as well. The legacy of the  sorcerer dictator Imbohl - a burning-hearted revolutionarist once - still holds the fate of the people in iron hands. The less the people knew about the ways of others life the less they questioned the methods of their masters and their own place in the „worker’s paradise”. Because corrupt power stands on the little man and his ignorance.

Skyfurnace Konstantinov

 

The unbreakable resistance of these muslim mortals and their guardians in the spirit world shattered the confidence of the armed pioneers of their universal truth, and some of the surviving warriors under the red banner starts to doubt the doctrines they were raised into. They rebel and start a voyage to find the real enemy and the final truth about the regime that still sticks to the control of the homeland; their people in life and even after their death. This is another historical reference: rebellious warships carry the message of freedom for the oppressed.

Another important historical reference The Red Star touches how power corrupts the champions of the people, and how even the most powerful and ancient guardians of Mother Russia can be deceived. Power and control are complex to understand and master. They change people, but the source of this power is shockingly simple and it is deniable. The crew of the skyfurnace Konstantinov passes previously unknown barriers to liberate the past and the present. They fight cold steel-hearted agents of the power those insist on upkeeping the facade for the sake of glory and imperial greatness.

 

 On the dark side, the often changing fonts and their sizes make The Red Star comics are a bit hard to read and follow. The story flows slowly through the volumes, and the monotonous patriotic sentiments can get tiresome after a time. On the other hand, the pictures are just beautiful, you can decorate your room with copies of them. The main characters are ingenious enough, and they offer quite a variety. The main antagonist looks just like a cybernetized Nazgul from the Lord of the Rings. Now isn't that cool?

But the main values of these comics are the historical sensitivity and the flawlessly molded alloy of distant generas like historical fiction, magic and science-fiction. Another fascinating aspect of The Red Star comics is how they rehabilitate the historically loaded symbol of the Red Star itself. The Red Star is a real gem. And guess what, it could make it to livescreen in our lifetime!

All pictures are the respective details of The Red Star Comics Volume 1-2

List of The Red Star Comics

The Red Star Homepage