By Pepe Moreno (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-021-5
Born in 1954, Spanish creator Pepe Moreno began his comics career illustrating for horror and adventure anthologies and children’s papers such as S.O.S., Pumby and Pulgarcito, Star and Bliz. He moved to America in 1977, working for Warren’s Creepy, Eerie 1984/1994 and Vampirella, as well as contributing to humour magazine National Lampoon before inevitably gravitating to Heavy Metal where the short, uncompromising post-punk sci-fi strips collected in this album caught the attention of Epic Illustrated editor Archie Goodwin.
The breakthrough strip Generation Zero led to the graphic novels Rebel, Joe’s Air Force and Gene Kong, but ever-restless, Moreno’s growing fascination with real-world technology led him first into animation (Tiger Sharks, Thunder Cats and Silver Hawks) and eventually into the formative field of computer-assisted illustration, resulting in a return to comics for the high-profile futuristic Batman thriller Digital Justice, one of the first comics sagas created completely on screen rather than on paper.
He then created an early CD-ROM thriller (Hellcab) in 1993, and these days spends most of his time working in high-end video games.
Crafted in the politically contentious yet conservative mid-Eighties when dystopian dreams of fallen empires abounded and post-apocalyptic survivalism was the prevailing zeitgeist, the short tales gathered here capture – in a beguiling burst of pop-art style and colour – a profusion of weird war tales that push man and imagination to ultimate limits… Following a Foreword from Moreno, the merciless wonderment begins with the eponymous ‘Zeppelin’ as two F-4 Phantom jets take off from an American aircraft carrier and encounter something far beyond a human capacity to understand, before being lost in time and accidentally triggering one of the most infamous disasters in recorded history…
‘La Mort en Rose’ focuses on a weary Tommy in the trenches of The Great War, when response to a new Boche poison gas utterly confounds and horrifies the German Generals who sanctioned it. Suffice to say those aged masters of war made sure it was never used again…
Back then we all thought that the next war would probably be the very last one, and that sentiment informs the last-ditch battles and eventually ironic defeat of the commander of ‘Bunker 6A’, whilst the stunning artistic experimentalism of ‘Kamikaze’ renders it the most memorable war-story in the collection despite its truly hackneyed “twist†ending…
‘The Fix’ follows a semi-delusional space ferry pilot back to a wasteland Earth and a reward that is neither just nor fit for heroes, and ‘Space Crusader’ reminds us that missionary zeal knows no limits when the pious warrior aboard Inquisitor II lands on the welcoming and innocently obliging planet of the hot naked chicks…
This slim, technicolor tome terminates with ‘Epus’ a dark contemporary battle-yarn that sees a dying GI in Vietnam somehow sucked back in time to challenge an ancient god of conflict for an answer to mankind’s martial madness…
Vivid pinball, poster and bubblegum hues blend with a stunning capacity to render machinery, monstrosity and ordnance to produce a wryly cynical paean to war-fever and programmed paranoia that will delight all fans of science fiction and blockbuster action.
Inexplicably out-of-print, this is plain-and-simple adult escapism no comics connoisseur could possible resist …
© 1986 Pepe Moreno. English language edition © 1986 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.