I keep telling myself that this book really isn’t as good as I thought at first glance. Since wednesday, I’ve read this book 4 times under varying circumstances (happy, sad, angry, sick to be exact) and the book was still as good as the first time I read it. Despite the fact that it’s based off of a movie based on a real event (which wasn’t very good, if memory serves), I still loved this book.
Full disclosure: I love Sgt. Rock, I think Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy may have been one of the first comics I read when I got into comics again (along with Infinite Crisis and Rebirth), so keep that in mind. The first part (Kilroy’s article about D-Day) was excellent, and the art (in most places, more on that later) was superb. Despite being a relatively typical story about the invasion, I was still hanging on every word of what Kilroy was writing in his magazine, and smiled a little when the “Kilroy was Here” cartoon came up at the end of that section (I grew up near the Quincy Shipyards, which is one of the places the cartoon got famous in WW2, so it’s just kinda cool). As the story shifted to a later date and we saw people messing around in camp, I noticed that a lot of the dialogue sounded like real people (especially those playing the baseball game, I laughed when Ice Cream Soldier called the guy holding him a “big palooka”), and Tucci (he wrote this too, right?) gave an adequate sense of dread in the last page when everyone’s marching off to their (assumed) doom (nitpick: Bulldozer’s supposed to be dumb, that sentence was way too eloquent for him and Wildman’s hair changed color, not important). All in all, an excellent story that I can’t wait to get the next issue of.
The art, however, was a different story. There were some pages that are absolutely beautiful (the first two-pages spread of the invasion was gorgeous), and some where people just look damn weird. A little too inconsistent for my tastes, but I could always tell who was being drawn (although I feel like I’m missing some references here and there, not important though).
So if you feel like reading a good WW2 story, pick this one up. It’s excellent and STILL only 2.99. Hopefully Tucci doesn’t let me down with the next one (although I love stuff like this so much, I’ll probably keep buying them anyway).
And it ain’t gonna make a difference where ya from, that’s Mutt Ishikawa, best damn pitcher in all of Hawaii!