To hear about the other books we talked about this week, you can find episode 77 of the podcast here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1793148/episodes/16750995
Each week when I finish reading my stack of books, I usually have a couple of books that I’m considering making my pick of the week. Initially both New Gods #3 and Dust to Dust #3 were in contention. But after a couple of days, I couldn’t get Hello Darkness #8 out of my head.
For those who aren’t familiar with Hello Darkness, it’s an anthology series that has included the story called The War by Becky Cloonan and Garth Ennis, and this issue was the final installment. The War has been one of my favorite things to read each month, which is saying something because it’s usually only 10 pages or so of story being in this anthology.
For the sake of not wanting to spoil anything, I won’t include page artwork or much detail on how the story wraps up. If you haven’t read this story yet, it revolves around a war that begins and how a group of friends struggle to survive after an attack in New York. Here is a snapshot of the first page of the first installment:
I couldn’t stop thinking about how comfortable we are and how it can all come crashing down. The security and comfort we have is a house made of cards that can be wiped out in hours, even minutes. None of it is real, and the bullshit we tell ourselves and each other about what we think about ultimately trivial topics is all just fooling ourselves. None of it matters when real tragedy strikes.
The last few pages were disturbing and shocking to say the least. Looking back on the first few installments it makes sense. There are callbacks to the beginning of the story, and it’s great when a story comes full circle and pays off on small details at the beginning of a story. But the last page is still something I’m struggling with. Is it done to be appalling or does it truly fit in the story? I mean, this is an Ennis story, so I didn’t expect a happy ending. But this one was something else.
I hope The War gets it’s own collected edition some day, I cant’ see why it wouldn’t. When it does I’ll have my pre-order in as soon as I can. It’s one of my favorite stories I’ve read and has a bit of everything in it. Ennis has a way of humanizing his characters and pointing out their imperfections and selfishness that we all have in some way. This makes the story feel more realistic and also makes the reader question themselves and what they would do in these type of extreme possibilities. No one really knows how they will react or behave when real tragedy strikes. Let’s hope we never have to find out.
