Living Up To Expectations: Guerillas #1 (of 9)

Guerillas #1 (of 9)
Written and Drawn by: Brahm Revel

So, I am about to tell you something very, very contradictory. I have an absolutely incredible fascination with Monkeys. Especially talking ones who wear clothes or costumes. And yet I have railed against Marvel Apes like a firebrand with a cause and a bloody pulpit to proselytize from. But that is not what this review is all about. It's about Brahm Revel's incredibly unique tale of the dark days in Vietnam in 1970. The main character is John Francis Clayton the son of a soldier who finds himself in the unenviable position of being sort of without direction during wartime and who starts to believe that the "regimentation of the Army sounded like a better and better idea". He is walking into the kind of life that no one should ever want but that his father wanted so badly for his son. To go off to war as a boy and come back as a man. Private Clayton watches in defenseless horror and utter cowardice as his entire squad is wiped out. He is on the verge of dying himself when he is saved by perhaps the most unlikely of all saviors, a squad of American BTU clad monkeys carrying M-16's. There is something that I also love about war stories. I have a list as long as my arm of comics that I absolutely love that are all war stories: The Other Side, Last Day in Vietnam, The Unknown Soldier, The 'Nam, Punisher: Born, any of Garth Ennis' war comics, The Light Brigade, and more and more and more. There is something about the camaradiere that is shared between soldiers. There is something about Brahm Revel's artwork that is also very reminsicent of the work that Cameron Stewart did on The Other Side. Go, seek it out, it's totally worth every penny of the $5.99 cover price, and it's not often that I would say something like that but this issue has 52 pages of uninterrupted comic in this issue and it will be a bi-monthly book ... so definitely check it out!