Uber


By Kieron Gillen, Canaan White & Keith Williams (Avatar Press)
ISBN: 978-1-59291-218-6

There’s something of an immediately post-WWII zeitgeist in effect in Britain at the moment: exhibitions, documentaries, a few exceedingly good TV dramas (Bletchley Circle, Murder on the Home Front, Foyle’s War) and even some comics.

Being British, writer Kieron Gillen grew up reading war comics like Battle and so has our peculiarly manic and trenchant viewpoint – engendered by the works of Pat Mills, John Wagner, Tom Tully, Alan Hebden and Gerry Finley-Day – to augment his own uniquely dark and sardonic imagination, previously displayed in strips and comics as varied as Phonogram, Save Point, Dark Avengers: Ares, Thor, Uncanny X-Men, Iron Man and many more.

Now he has applied the implausible metahuman trappings of the American superhero comicbook to the bleak, gritty, apocalyptically human scaled drama of “the Last Good War” to produce a vicious, nasty and utterly enthralling sci-fi-tinged epic of staggering scope and power.

This first full-colour trade paperback compilation, illustrated with stark, gory verve by Canaan White & Keith Williams, collects issues #0-5, and posits a much debated “What If…?” as Germany’s Götterdämmerung is averted at the very last moment by a very nasty miracle…

Blending scrupulous historical research with a canny take on human nature, the story begins with the triumphant Russians barbarously overrunning Berlin on the night of April 24th 1945, even as arch-patriot General Sankt delivers at long last a handful of incomprehensible human weapons to General Heinz Guderian, just as that demoralised, defeated Reichsmann readies himself for the end.

Five days later in a secret base near the Swiss border, a trusted scientist for Projekt U murders her former colleagues and sabotages the outpost before dashing towards the advancing American forces, carrying an incredible secret…

With Hitler putting a gun into his mouth word comes of an impossible turnaround. The human “Battleships” Siegmund, Siegfried and Seiglinde, supplemented by lesser supermen and wonder women, have ravaged and repulsed the despised subhuman Soviets…

The Generals realise even these Wunderwaffen (the result of years of ruthless research) cannot reverse Germany’s fate, but by their ghastly actions and uncanny efforts the nation may be able to negotiate a favourable armistice that won’t leave the country broken forever.

Der Fuhrer, however, totally demented and wantonly vengeful, wants Grand Opera outcomes: Wagnerian Cataclysm and the world made into a rubble heap that would make Berlin seem merely scratched…

The madman appals his closest cronies when he orders Seigfried to execute a million Russian prisoners of war before despatching his ghastly Hell-kinder to destroy Paris and resume his holy war on Russia.

Meanwhile British spy Stephanie has made it back to England – having en route despatched two of the Ãœbermensch she helped create – and convinced Winston Churchill to fast-track the Allies’ own Human Tank project.

To facilitate this, she had brought stolen samples of the transformative crystalline chemical Woden’s Blood and copies of artefacts and documents used by Nazi scientist Professor Metzger.

The ancient – possibly extraterrestrial – inscriptions and records the biochemist was working from go to BletchleyPark where brilliant cryptologist Alan Turing lets his new Electronic Brain loose on deciphering the still untranslated majority of the writings…

Woden’s Blood only upgrades 1 in every 5000 humans, and needs repeated, gradual applications, but even so the harried Allies still find enough volunteers to get the ball rolling, and as weeks pass they slowly become a plausible answer to the now limited and stalled German superhuman project.

In the intervening time, Battleship Sieglinde has led her less-developed and incomplete Mark 2 comrades in the march upon so-recently liberated Paris to carry out Hitler’s demands for punishment. Now as the fanatical Ãœber Soldaten prepare to raze the city they are ambushed by a hastily prepared Expeditionary Force of Anglo American Human Tanks.

They are not enough…

To Be Continued…

Savage, brutal and visually shocking, this stunning, doom-drenched drama crackles with tension, drips with mystery and suspense and comes with a chilling 20+ page gallery of covers, variants and ancillary artwork, and will appeal to lovers of fantasy fiction and unreal war stories alike…

© 2013 Avatar Press Inc. Uber and all related properties ™ & © 2013 Avatar Press Inc.
Uber will be released on April 1st 2014