9/22/14 - Prisoner of None - Chapter One: The End of Days (Full Court Press)

So let's talk some more about the !@#$ War, son. 

What? Are you rolling your !@#$ eyes at me, son? You think you heard this !@#$ already?

Well, true, I have stuffed your !@#$ ears full from time to time. We've talked about Supernazis and Japanese Holy Warriors, about what !@#$ing happened to us at Camp Rogers and what really happened the night I !@#$ing killed Hitler. All kinds of !@#$.

But let me tell you about Hiroo Onoda -- the scariest, most dedicated !@#$ing Japanese Soldier ever. 

Imagine this, son. It's back during the War, and the Japanese are sending their people all over the !@#$ Pacific to take and hold territory. So in 1944 they take Hiroo straight out of !@#$ing intelligence school, and send his !@#$ to Lubang, in the Philippines. And they tell him to make !@#$ing sure our forces can't !@#$ing take the island.

So Hiroo gets there, and he's got all kinds of big !@#$ plans. Blow up the airfield, trash the pier... !@#$, blow the !@#$ island off the map if he has to. But the Imperial Soldiers already there look at this fresh-faced kid with his !@#$ orders, and tell him to go pound sand. And since they're !@#$ing higher in rank than he is, well, so much for his orders.

And that's life in the !@#$ Japanese Imperial Army, son. It sucks. Wear a hat.

The propaganda pictures always make it seem more fun than it is.

Well, wouldn't you know it, but in early '45 we eventually !@#$ing make it to their little part of the Pacific. And because these people didn't do what Hiroo was ordered to do, our boys just slide on in and start kicking !@#$ from one side of the island to the other. All over in a few days, really, except for Hiroo and a few other soldiers, who he orders to run for the !@#$ing bushes and not look back. 

Now, Hiroo was intelligence -- sworn to never !@#$ing surrender, and ordered not to take his own !@#$ life. So he and his boys hunker the !@#$ down, wait for the enemy to let down their guard, and then engage in guerrilla actions against the locals. Generally just burning crops and !@#$ing !@#$ up, but they also start shooting it out with cops and farmers, and slowly lose their own men over time. 

Until it was just Hiroo, hiding out in the !@#$ bushes and waiting for chances to strike...

Hardcore as nails to the crotch, son.

Now, the story does have a !@#$ing happy ending. Turns out Hiroo had become something of a walking ghost to folks back home. They knew where he was, maybe, but didn't dare go in after him for fear of getting !@#$ing shot. In fact, it took some would-be explorer to get the !@#$ balls to go into the jungle, face him down, and try and convince him the war was over. And even then they had to fly in his !@#$ing former superior officer to get him to do it.

So that's that, son. 1945 to 1974, he kept fighting the War because no one officially told him he didn't have to, anymore. And that is !@#$ing saying something. !@#$, it'd !@#$ing warm the cockles of my heart if I hadn't spent a bunch of years trying to !@#$ing kill people like him. 

But that's war, son. It's fought by people just like you and me. They sign up, put on the uniform, take an oath, and go fight like !@#$ for the places they call their home. And while you might not like their !@#$ countries, their !@#$ty politics, or what they might do with you when they land on your !@#$ing doorstep, the fact remains that they're no more evil to be fighting you than you are to be fighting them. 

(Let's just not let it get out that I actually !@#$ing said all that, okay? I got an image to maintain.)

That's !@#$ing better. I'll take 50 gross. In black and pink.

Now, you might wonder why the !@#$ I've bent your !@#$ ear about Hiroo, and duty, and the fact that, whatever uniforms we wear on the battlefield, it's all red and white underneath? Well, it's because I have just read the first installment of a comic that is, in my !@#$ing opinion, shaping up to probably be one of the best looks at Wartime Superheroes, and what happens after the war, that I've read in quite a while -- worthy of standing alongside things like All-New Invaders and The Twelve. 

Plus, it's got the mother of all soldiers left out of the loop when his own !@#$ side surrendered, which should sound pretty !@#$ing familiar, right about now...

It's called Prisoner of None, and we are told that it is going to be the saga of Fantomudoragon -- a Japanese Superhero from World War II who, after vanishing at the end of a losing battle, comes back 70 years later and has to make his way in a world he can barely recognize, anymore. 

Not that this was really worth !@#$ing fighting for, son.

Note I said "we are told." So far all we've got is Chapter One to go by. But what a !@#$ing amazing chapter it is. 

We start with Victory over Europe. Hitler is finally !@#$ing dead, Liberty's Seven have triumphed, and an end has been put to the conflict in that theater. That just leaves Japan in the Allies' crosshairs, which means its down to the Japanese heroes known as the Emperor's Sword to stop the oncoming invasion. 

It goes down on Okinawa, and it's pretty much an even match for most of the fighting -- heroes pounding heroes as the battle rages around them. But eventually the Allies' superior firepower brings the fight to a standstill, and all the Japanese can do is die, surrender, or retreat. 

Or double the !@#$ down, sword in hand.

But those words are not in Fantomudoragon's !@#$ing vocabulary, son. So he gathers what few Imperial soldiers he can, gets them to regroup in a cave, and joins them to wait for the inevitable counteroffensive... which, as we know, does not !@#$ing come.

Cut to 70 years in the future, when the cave is stumbled upon by boys playing with Frisbees, and an old and bedraggled Fantomudoragon staggers out into the sunlight...

What's next? Well, that's what we've got. Chapter One is done and available both online and as a print from Sellfy, and believe me when I say you should get the print and subscribe to get updates, because if The End of Days is any indication, this is going to go somewhere !@#$ing interesting. 

Why? Well, let me break it the !@#$ down for you, SPYGOD style.

1) The Art

Saying that the art is perfect for the story might seem like a throwaway review comment, but in the case of Prisoner of None I mean it as the complement it is. David Bednarski's work suits the story so well that I couldn't !@#$ing see any other style really meshing with the tale. 

It may appear to be cartoony -- and, yes, it is -- but the clean lines, lack of cross hatching, and use of color for shade make its presentation highly stylized, almost like a propaganda poster done for the Justice League generation. !@#$, you hardly even see any realistic blood and guts, which should be pretty !@#$ unusual for a post-code, independent title that wants to talk about war, right?

Meanwhile, over in Dynamite's "Tankies" ...

Why does that work? Because the other, more heinous aspects of such a conflict -- like disposable soldiers, racism, and the crazy macho !@#$ that happens when grown men and women put on costumes to fight other men and women in costumes -- doesn't have to complete with people getting turned into !@#$ing hamburger by bullets and bombs.  

And that makes that kind of sad and sorry !@#$ stand out all the more, especially when we actually deal with character interaction...

2) The Ensemble

... which, in this case, is top-notch.

One of the harder things to do in any story where there's a whole !@#$ bunch of regular characters running around is to give everyone face time, and make us be able to register them as distinct individuals who have their own story to tell. It's even harder to make them !@#$ing interesting on such a short budget, as all you can really do is dangle enough threads in front of the reader to make them know just enough to want to know more.

So far, author Vito Delsante is pulling that off pretty !@#$ well, and on both sides of the coin. What could otherwise be a supersoldier circlejerk against a bunch of fungible Japanese supervillains is instead a clever introduction to the series. You can tell right from the !@#$ing bat who's a go-getter, a reluctant warrior, a leader, a !@#$hole, a down-to-earth weirdo, a spooky dude, a braggart, and so on.

We're told that, in Chapter Two, more folks are going to be coming along. I can't wait to see what we'll !@#$ing get with them, especially when the comic has more time to develop them.  (But you can get a preview on their facebook page, along with origin stories of the WWII characters)

3) Japanese Wartime Supers

For some weird !@#$ reason, people don't seem to want to present too many World War II Japanese Superheroes. They're more than happy to make Supernazis until the !@#$ing cows come home, play poker, get drunk, and kick over the !@#$ lantern, but the Eastern edge of the Axis gets real short shrift when it comes to costumed warriors for the !@#$ Emperor. 

Why? I have no !@#$ing idea, son. If I had to guess, it's because, after spending most of the war depicting every Japanese soldier as a yellow-skinned, found-faced, buck-toothed, skinny-eyed man in round glasses with bad mustache choices, most writers and artists are !@#$ uncomfortable putting any of them into a spandex outfit and giving them some semblance of a nationalistic name for fear of bringing up old racist tropes, or the like. 

We'll call him "Go The !@#$ to Work Man"

Well, I am very happy to say that Prisoner of None is not incarcerated (*cough* sorry) by that fear, and is !@#$ing happy to show us some Japanese wartime heroes. Better than that, they've given us actual heroes, as opposed to creepy supervillains whose antics are adored only by the fearful, the brainwashed, and enemy soldiers sworn to obey any nasty !@#$ in a flashy costume who's on their side in these things.

Maybe the Japanese is a little off*, and maybe some of the concepts seem a little !@#$ing awry. But they all have a little grain of individuality to them that makes them !@#$ interesting in their own right.

And !@#$ it, son, let's not mince words: these are heroes I can believe in. Men who either stumbled into strange circumstances, or else volunteered for them, and came out the other end ready to give their all for flag, land, and people -- just like Hiroo Onoda, out in the jungles of Lubang.

I was happy to see them there. I'm sorry to see them go. And I hope I'll see more of them, or their descendents, when Chapter Two arrives. 

SPYGOD'S Verdict: Three super-enthusiastic thumbs up for what's promising to be a magnificent look at what happens when warriors leave a war only to come into a peace they can't imagine, in a world they can't recognize. Deceptively cartoonlike art and a keen ability to do an ensemble piece transform what could be just another tale of wartime gods beating on each other into a work that is both compelling and intriguing. 

Prisoner of None - Chapter One: The End of Days - read it online or buy it at Sellfy!

* "Phantom Dragon" should really be Rei Ryu, for example. Maybe they named him that to strike fear into the Emperor's enemies?