Broken Frontier

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It’s usually a metaphor, for Team Orphan, on the trail of a madman, it’s a signal…"time to fight!"

Last issue, Team Orphan was sent to uncover the bodies of children murdered by a genocidal madman. What they found was a field full of empty graves and a land filled with heartache. They are given new orders to kill the man responsible but to assassinate him saves him from the wrath of his murdered victims. What will the ghostly remains of the Children of the Grave do to prevent Team Orphan from stealing their chance at revenge, justice and redemption?

This independent comic from Shooting Star Comics highly impressed me with its first issue. It seamlessly blended a technical military adventure with a seriously creepy horror undertone. This issue is similarly impressive, although it is far more action oriented than its predecessor. In this issue, Team Orphan comes across one of Colonel Assan’s death squads. With startling precision and deadly efficiency, our three heroes start about taking care of business.

Tom Waltz picks up the pace with this issue which reads rather quickly. You will not be disappointed, however, by the pages rapidly whistling by because they feature some of the most crackling action I have read in a comic for some time. Bullets zing off the page and crunch into the skulls and squelch through the bodies of the enemy with morbid relish. There is no getting around this: Children of the Grave #2 is a violent comic. Waltz made sure; however, that every bullet has a cosmic justice attached to it. There is no confusion as to who the good guys are and who the bad are. There are some unfortunately clichéd representations of ethnic characterization which makes relating to the people in the comic a little difficult. Waltz has managed to craft the insides of the characters well; it is only on the outward ‘masks’ of each character that he falters.

If there was anyone born to illustrate such a death-storm, it would surely be Casey Maloney. He handles every aspect of this comic quite well. There are precise replications of military technology, zombie children and moments of dark atmosphere to represent and he does all with accomplished energy and verve. There only are slight moments when the artwork would have benefited from some colour so as to help differentiate shadows and figures from background and smoke.

Waltz and Maloney have a real winner here. I for one will make sure I keep reading.

-Matthew Clark