SPECWAR #1
Story:
Art:

Written by Frank A. Lauria
Pencils by Michael Docherty & Armando Gil
Inks by Oscar Lopez
Colors by Elizabeth Lewis & Peter Tobolsky

Published by Peter Four
Price: TBA.

My Verdict: Better than most.

Definition of a bad day. A ship carrying a slew of liquid natural gas is in New York harbor. And it's been commandeered by terrorists. Not only do these whackjobs have hostages, but they also have explosives. And just because they're thorough bastages, they've got a bit of plutonium as well. So they're not just threatening to level part of the city, they're adding in a few thousand years of radioactive contamination to boot. So...pop quiz, hot shot? What do you do?

The premise for the book is solid. It concerns special operatives going in and doing jobs where everything is on the line, and all of this is done realistically. How realistic, you might well ask. Well, Lauria chalked up twenty years' active duty as a Navy SEAL, so you would think he knew what he was talking about.

So we realize that Lauria could probably kill us at fifty yards with a playing card, but can the man write comics? The answer is yes, and thankfully, better than a lot of the "names" doing so today. He does this by showcasing a few key strengths that are lacking in a lot of books I read these days. One, the story is occurring all over the map. From the ship to the city to the Oval Office and quite a few places in between--but never do you get location lag from hopping about. Also--the action sequences actually make sense when read. A lot of artists these days will try and do the comic book equivalent of an up-close-and-personal hand-to-hand combat sequence you'd see in the cinema. In fact, these sequences look like just stills taken at random from said combat, and as a result you have no idea what in the high holy hell is going on. I'm not going to say any names, because that would be indiscrete. Chuck Austen.

The two things that are just a wee bit off on the title are first, in some places, the dialogue doesn't feel real. For all the real stuff going on around the characters, in places they talk like...I'm not sure, cardboard cutouts of people rather than people. Second--and I'm just going off of one issue here--but the feeling I get is that the concept of the team of specialists is going to get more play than the characters that make up the team. By the end of the first issue, I don't know anybody that's on the team--they're all nameless soldiers. This means it's harder to get engaged with their situation, and it's harder to be concerned about their safety--especially if we can't tell them apart. I don't want color-coded bandanas or anything like The Ninja Turtles, but some kind of designation for some individuals would be nice.

Additional points are given for telling the story straight and manages to avoid a complete devolution into American rah-rah mania. Nothing wrong with rah-rah, but if it overpowers all around it, it can sink a story. Military buffs will enjoy it, and after a few more issues of Lauria getting used to the water, I think this might turn into a well-rounded read.