Mills, Scott – Trenches

Website

Trenches

If you’re one of those people who just want to know whether or not I like a book, well, I liked this one a lot. I think it’s the best single thing he’s done, with the possible exception of Cells, but it’s hard to put them in the same category when Trenches is a fat graphic novel. It’s the story of two brothers and their commanding officer in WWI, and it’s incredible. The battle scenes are complete chaos, the flashbacks to the two brothers growing up make them both completely real by the end of the book, and he just tells a great story. A lot of people would be tempted to dumb this down or to make it “politically correct” to avoid offending anyone, and I’m happy to report that Scott isn’t one of those people. He talked about this a bit in the interview I had with him about nine months ago, and I have to admit that I had high expectations for it. They were met and then some. Some might think that this is an overreaction on my part, but I think this catapults him right alongside all of the other major accomplished comics artists, if he wasn’t there already. That doesn’t pay the bills, but he should at least get the same critical success as Chris Ware and Dan Clowes. He’s not as snooty, granted, but he can tell a hell of a story.