Men of War #1 – Review

Main story by: Ivan Brandon (writer), Tom Derenick (art), Matt Wilson (colors), Rob Leigh (letters), Kate Stewart (assistant editor) & Joey Cavalieri (editor)

Navy SEALS back-up by: Jonathan Vankin (writer), Phil Winslade (art), Thomas Chu (colors) & Leigh (letters)

The Story: DC returns to war comics and one of them’s last name is Rock.

What’s Good: The most exciting thing about the new DC 52 titles is that there is a heavy helping of non-traditional superhero fare.  Most of it is still in the same sci-fi vein (Swamp Thing, Animal Man, etc.), but the inclusion of a title like Men of War is all kinds of exciting for the comics industry because our hobby could use a LOT of diversification.

The highlight of this issue was really the Navy SEALs back-up feature.  The main story featured a couple of negatives that I’ll discuss below, but this back-up was a pure war story.  I can’t really comment on how accurate the depiction of Navy SEALs was, but this was just a quick story of American soldiers on a patrol, they get shot at by a sniper, one get’s wounded and the others have to go sort out the sniper.  Good stuff, great art!  Very solid war comic.  More of this please!

The main story had some good parts and was enjoyable enough.  It spends a lot of time establishing this Corporal Rock as a modern day US Army soldier who has a familial relationship to THE Sergeant Rock.  Probably the best thing about this story was the US soldiers are the good guys.  Sure, some of their commanding officers are dicks, but I am so sick of every fictional story about US soldiers have the token guy who rapes prisoners or the redneck racist guy or the drug-using guy.  I’m patriotic and want to see positive depictions of the US armed forces… Sue me!