Detainees
This is one of those comics where I’m really glad I read what looked like the legalese at the start of the book, because that’s where Mike mentioned that this is all based on a dream. Without that information I would have had a whole lot of questions. This one starts off with three soldiers burying some bodies. We never see the bodies, we don’t know what happened, and we’re not entirely sure what the story is of these soldiers. It sets the mood nicely for the rest of the comic, as there’s a sense of ambiguity and/or danger hanging over everything. We learn a few things about these soldiers, then they notice a child watching them from the bushes. One of them is so tense that he takes a shot at the kid, but from there they’re determined to find him and help him. They trace him back to a bunker where (after determining that it’s not a trap), they talk to him and see another woman who looks like she’s trapped in a cell. They try to get her out but are unsuccessful, which leads to them all spending the night in the bunker. This is the point where things start getting really weird, or possibly just awful, but I’ll leave that to the reader to discover. Mike and Colin have a nice sense of pacing, and the casual way some of the horrors are discussed really sticks with you. That conclusion is brutal, and completely earned by what comes before. Honestly, knowing it comes from a dream makes it a little easier to take, even knowing that horrible things happen in war all the time. It’s a solid story, in other words, and it’s well worth checking out.
