Before Garth Ennis, I wasn’t a huge fan of war comics.  But Battlefields, War Stories, and Unknown Soldier led me to star picking up titles like Sgt. Rock.  These days, I really appreciate when someone who loves a great war story tells a great story.  And while I didn’t enjoy this collection, it’s clearly created by people who love the genre.

The first story, Armistice Night (by Darwyn Cooke and Dave Stewart) reads like it was dreamed up by two friends who had a really funny idea.  Both of them are at the top of the industry at what they do (Cooke as an artist, Stewart as a Colorist), but the writing here just didn’t hit the mark for me.  It’s silly, and it’s supposed to be silly, but the jokes are very silver agey, and didn’t make me laugh.  And the panels where they replaced the violence with odd designs, sound effects and random word balloons just didn’t work for me as art, storytelling technique, or joke.  It looked great, though.

Story: 1/5    Art:  5/5   (they split the goalposts!)

The second story (written by Ivan Brandon, Art by Nic Klein) is my favorite of the trio.  A submarine sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and things get tragic, and then odd.  It’s a very brief story that only kind of resolves, but it was creepy in a great way.

Story: 4/5   Art: 4/5

The final story (written by Jan Strnad, Art by Gabriel Hardman) was a story about a dying soldier who hallucinates/flashes back to his youth as he’s dying.  It didn’t effect me in any way.  The art was fine.  The story was fine.  But it was just fine, nothing that wowed me.

Story: 2/5    Art 3/5