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.

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