World War 3 #2

World War 3 #2

Antarctic Press 2021

By Motofumi Kobayashi

1994, in a world like our own, but different. The Soviet policy of perestroika has failed, and General Secretary Gorbachev has been assassinated. Now, a rampaging portion of the Soviet military has resolved to invade the Western Bloc countries, escalating the threat of devastating global conflict. Leading war manga figure Motofumi Kobayashi, creator of the hit series Cat Shit One, delivers a gritty, realistic depiction of a third World War that might have actually happened had there been one wrong move!

If you are into war books then you should be reading this, if you love a good involved and intelligent story you should be reading this, if you love strong comics then you should be reading this. In short you should be reading this. While it is a work of fiction it really is scary in its depiction of what could have been and it’s a highly powerful read in this regard. I found myself completely mesmerised by this book and the story it is telling and while I may not know a lot about tanks you don’t really need to because the story is pretty much self explanatory when it comes to what we see, the formations of the troops and the overall gist of what is happening between the warring factions.

I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The way we see the character development through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does wonders in bringing their personalities to life. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story the more I want to see and learn.

I greatly appreciate how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. How the layers open up these avenues to be explored and how this adds such great depth, dimension and complexity to the story is amazingly well rendered. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is exceptionally well achieved.

These interiors are completely and utterly mindbogglingly gorgeous! The linework is exquisite and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality of detail within the work that we see throughout are bewitching. That we see the composition within the panels bringing out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. Each panel is laid out so nicely and some with backgrounds that enhance and expand the moments and even those that don’t have them do this as well. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a masters eye for storytelling. There are two colour pages here and they are spectacularly rendered. It really adds this depth to the work but honestly the black and white style we see with gray shades is beyond stunning. It has for me anyway a much greater impact than seeing it in colour and I think that two pages are the perfect compliment to the rest of the work.

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This just goes to show that Motofumi is one of today’s most brilliant storytellers and that he can do it all himself just goes to show how much talent, skill and creativity the man has. I am flabbergasted by the sheer quality and level of amazing work that we see within these pages. The writing and characterisation alongside these mind blowing interiors to create something so utterly spectacular is work that is just insanely good.