15. Adventures of the Rifle Brigade vol 1 #1 to 3 ... Vertigo ...

To all my readers of this blog (all three of you? Hahahahaha!), my apologies for being away for nearly 3 weeks. It's not that I gave up on this but rather I have a very legitimate (long-winded) reason (not excuse). My stupid external HDD that I was using to monitor my stuff (like which review has been done and what-not) crashed on me while I was travelling. So I had to wait until I got home, sort out the critical stuff of my life and then all the fun stuff ... unfortunately, I haven't done back up since end of Sep ... so it means about 2 months of my life has just gone up in fumes ... including this novel I was writing all 300 pages of it!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!

That aside, we are returning to this reviews blog with a vengeance. I have a stack of goodies from diverse genres lined up ... and unlike all mainstream publishers (read that as Marvel and DC) ... we are not renumbering or relaunching or whatever but just plunging it on! Let's get on with this!

Okay. This review is a book by Garth Ennis and frequent collaborator on art Carlos. I LOVED their work and this, it is no exception (in fact this miniseries is so successful that there is a collected edition and a sequel)

The setting is in Europe during WW2 where the Brits (Allies) needed a crack commando team that will do all sorts of over-the-top dangerous, weird, strange so-called missions. So they assigned a team under a "captain" who is not the typical upper-crust officer type. With him are a real assortment of weirdos - bagpipe lover, giant sized guy who says one word, a number 2 who is man-crushing on his boss and what-not. You get the picture

And to match them off, they have a bunch of Nazis who thankfully are not depicted as superugly ala most of early DC war mags where Americans look like decent man's man but Nazis are just pigs ... when we know it probably ... should be the reverse? Hahahah! Just kidding. People are people regardless of nationality

Anyway in this series, the boys got to know each other, no time for training before they are dropped smack in the thick of the action. The enemy has got problems of their own. And before you know it, anyone and we meant anyone can bite the dust even before the book ends. Remember this is an Ennis book

I am not going to tell you about the mission. If you have read a novel/ comic/ watch a war movie, you have seen the usual except that here everything is larger than life with a sadistic comedic twist. Guaranteed enjoyment as long as you can stomach some of the more graphic violence but with art that is realistic yet a combination of cartoony it softens the impact and works well

I loved it (9/10)

Anyway,