Image Comics

All posts tagged Image Comics

We Stand On Guard #2

If you want to read the review of We Stand on Guard #1 you can Click Here for that review.

So we talked a little bit back in the review for issue #1 about how much I love Vaughan’s writing, so I feel like we should jump ahead into the actual review of We Stand On Guard #2

Spoilers Ahead

We open up issue #2 with a flashback from Amber’s past. We’re seeing a group of soldiers bust into an elderly families home in Dauphin, Manitoba Canada in 2013. I had to look up where Dauphin was. It’s a few hundred miles north of North Dakota, and north west of Winnipeg. This is a year after bombs have been dropped. It’s implied that there is some sort of American occupation. A hunting rifle is found in the couples home, so they are taken to “the camps.” The couple are loaded into military trucks and taken away. We see then that Amber and her brother were hiding in doghouses in the couples back yard.

The scene jumps back to the present, where the Chief is asking Amber if she will be coming with them or not. They have to get out of there pretty quick, before the Americans come looking for their mech. A huge vehicle, large enough to carry the mech with them, shows up with “Highway” driving.

Amber must be blindfolded if the Two-Four are going to take her back to base with them. When they take the blindfold off of her, they are in the Two-Four’s huge base.

When they get to the base they offer Amber some food or a shower. She decides to have a shower first. And we have a somewhat creepy scene where Dunn and his coywolf (half coyote half wolf) are watching her shower. He tells her that he is just looking for scars where the yanks could have implanted trackers. Dunn and his husband had found this coywolf on their property years ago.

The Chief and LePage, had stayed behind to cover the tracks of the giant transport the Two-Four have. They see a flight overhead and Chief tells LePage to get out of there. Afterwhich Chief is confronted by several American soldiers. They tell her to put her weapon down, but she decides to shoot instead. This causes them all to shoot her, but unfortunately, or fortunately, however you see it, she isn’t dead. So they are taking her back to the “Basement.”

This is where the issue ends.
We get a little bit of development into some of these Two-Four characters, and a little bit more on how much the Americans are jerks in this story.

The art is still great in this issue. I can see I’m going to be enjoying Skroce throughout this series.

I’m still very into the story, which is always good when you read the second of any series. The second can really make or break something. This one kept me on edge, and excited to turn the page to see what else is coming up.

Still feeling like this is at least a 8 out of 10 jalapeños.
Nothing too crazy yet. Just good storytelling, world building, and character development.

We Stand On Guard #1

If you have been living in a hole in the ground for the past 15 years you may not know who Brian K Vaughan is. To fill you in, Vaughan is one of my favorite writers. His creation Saga, an intergalactic space opera, is hailed as one of the best current ongoing series in comics. He was also the writer responsible for Y: The Last Man. If you have not read these books, go get them and read them immediately. They are both excellent reads. But for now, let’s move on to We Stand On Guard.

(Spoilers Ahead)

The Book opens up in Canada in 2112. The US is being bombed by an unknown source, as a Canadian family watch the news reports together. All of a sudden, we’re in the middle of a US retaliation bombing of Ontario. The bombings kill the mom and dad. Then we jump ahead a dozen or so years.
Amber (the little girl from the family) is out walking through the great white north, when she is attacked by this large American dog mech. Fortunately, Canada’s “Two-Four” are on the scene. They Save amber from the mech. Who are the Two-Four? The Two-Four are a force of Canadian civilian freedom fighters, and they seem to be pretty bad ass.

The Two-Four are helping Amber by patching her up and combing the area for more americans, when a giant 3 story tall gorilla mech shows up. Fortunately, the Two-Four have trained for this, so they are able to make quick work of the mech. What they have not trained for, is the american soldier piloting this mech.
Some members of the Two-Four are suspicious of Amber and think she may be a spy.  She should kill the soldier. While they are arguing over the morality of making someone kill who isn’t a killer, etc… Amber takes matters into her own hands and kills the solder.

This book is 40+ pages long, so we get a little more story than we would in a typical 20 page comic. We’re able to get a pretty good look into who Amber is.

Also, the art is really great in this issue. I love the design of the animalistic mechs. Steve Skroce does an excellent job with the covers and the interior of this book.

I want to learn more about this war torn Canadian future. So I will be visiting book two very soon.

So in conclusion, a new story by Vaughan is pretty exciting to me. There are just so many possibilities on where he could take us in this story, so in giving this one a rating, I may be rating on the possibilities of what the story could be as opposed to the first issue. I did enjoy issue #1 quite a bit though.

So, We Stand on Guard gets 8 out of 10 jalapeños.