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

The super brother always watches – Superman: Red Son

Today, we enter deeper into Nerdistan and explore a different kind of historical fiction. I don’t know if the dear reader is into comics or not. Regardless, I can show you a story with a historical, what more, with political-philosophical depth. The alternate history novels of the DC Comic Book Universe are the so called Elseworld novels, where crucial timeline events could turn out fairly differently, and we can meet otherwise well-established fictional characters in the mainstream continuity in a different light. In this case, what if the freshly orphan Kal-L’s tiny ship had arrived twelve hours later from the exploded Krypton and the later Superman would have found and grown up in the stalinist Soviet Union instead of Smallville, Kansas? Thank God for Mark Millar.

The answer for many prayers

Zor-L loved mankind so much that he gave his only son to redeem us from our sins and lead us into a new dawn… Well, yeah, despite years of comic books reading it didn’t strike me until I watched Man of Steel how much the origin creators had borrowed from christian mythology. The character of Superman has a lot of common with Jesus, Son of God. They were sent into this savage world by an enlightened force to give guidance and protection. Both lived simple lives to a point, both had an encounter with their nemesis before choosing paths to fulfill their destinies, and so on. But could twelve hours of difference corrupt the iconic character of truth and justice, the American way so much that we will percept the saviour as a crab of humanity’s own idealistic improvement?

 

Somewhere in an Ukrainian kolkhoz

The road to hell and those good intentions

Enemies in a prolonged struggle start to remind of each other in time, war and conflict do this to people. I read once that preferring one political philosophy over another depends on how we see our own race (or how old we are). A leftist down deep believes in the innocence of the noble wildman, who was dragged out from his happy and social being before the times of writing. He may look savage and chaotic in nature now, but if we establish the perfect political-economical system for him, he will have the chance to sing kumbaya instead of the selfish struggle of necessity for survival. So, people are good in heart. But a rightist doesn’t see this original sinlessness but the savage creature that cannot control himself. For this different reason he wants to maintain the order and set the rules through a class in charge. In a nutshell, you are free to do what you are allowed to because we above know it better.

We can do it without the alien! Luthor on his campaign.

Now, they don’t look much different on the second reading, do they? How can we classify living socialism or modern democracy? Is the former leftist because it establishes a new ruling class, which keeps telling what is the best for us? Or do representative democracies really belong to the right spectrum? Utopias or transitional orders have the nasty habit to re-establish obsolate ruling patterns because it’s all about control and better knowing than the mass in the end. Power can blind and corrupt even the saviour, and human made political-economical orders strived so much to prove themselves independent from the „celestial” influence can turn into an utopia like Yin and Yang turn into each other.

Superman, a force that can bring the light?

A childhood friend of mine once told me, Communism would be the perfect order for mankind, but everybody must be a saint for it. Well, what we have now here is an almighty alien, a demigod even, who can literally move mountains, change the weather, even keep you safe on roads day by day. His own self-sacrifice can make the system work. Resistance is futile because he can hear every word like no totalitarian state did before. And how does the other self-proclaimed beacon of light answer his challenge in providing for humanity? This is where Superman: Red Son fascinates me because it grabs the history of the 20th century by its very core. How do the opposing systems and ideologies look like in each other’s mirror? How despite all the antagonisms are they still connected? 

A new page is the metahuman arms-race in this Cold War

Why does it worth it?

Yes, a comic book can provide this thought-provoking, and it entertains the reader immensely. Superman: Red Son revives Cold War like a historical footage and breathes life into it. Things are upside-down here. Forget the stupid-looking pants worn on the outside, the hero cliches, everything and everyone are well-placed. What did I miss in Red Son is a little more from the classic pantheon of Superman villains, but hey, it’s only three volumes. The end is no less than shocking, or what does „L” really mean in Superman’s kryptonian name?

Attila