David Kendall (1)

I picked up this selection of comics because it had "The Tin-Pot Foreign General and The Old Iron Woman" by Raymond Briggs in it. I just love that story and its strong illustrations.

The book has some really good comics, such as the aforementioned Briggs tale (which really is not a comic, but an illustrated story), and the lead comic "I Saw It" about the Hiroshima bombings by eye-witness Keiji Nakazawa. The other good stuff was mainly by European, more experimental artists.

The main body of the book is compiled of comics from Blazing Combat, Battle Picture Weekly, etc. These are mainly very run-of-the-mill in nature.

Nevertheless, the good comics overcome the bad ones in this compilation. I would have given it 4 stars, if not for the production values. ALL the comics are just scans of some earlier publications, and many are really awfully copied here. And since most of the stuff is in B&W, they loose much of their impact. For example, the Briggs story, which was originally partly in colour and partly in B&W, looses that aspect altogether. And the stories that are reproduced in colour, are the more mediocre ones. Really an incomprehensible solution...

But, you can read this book just to know which stuff to buy elsewhere. :)… (mer)