Comic Review: Heavy Water

Not every work of fiction is what we might call quality literature, or high art, or some other third term. There are some pretty mindless works out there, but that doesn't mean they don't have value. Part of growing-up and being mature is realizing that sometimes you need brainless fun in your life. Why am I rambling like this? Don't worry, this all relates to what we're reviewing today. We're taking a look at the alternate history comic Heavy Water by Jonathan W.C. Mills and Alberto Muriel.

Heavy Water takes places in a world where Nazi Germany won World War II thanks to being the first nation to develop an atomic bomb. By the 21st century the Nazis rule the world with an iron grip.  Citizens are monitored by security cameras 24/7. Every aspect of their citizen's lives are harshly regimented. Police armed with laser guns roam the streets. It is a dark and grim place, but there is light in the darkness. Ben Haukelid is a mid-level bureaucrat doing his best to get by in life. Then he discovers that his girlfriend Floria is part of an underground resistance movement. The group aims to send someone back to World War II to stop the Nazis from getting the bomb. Before long, Ben is whisked away to Nazi-occupied Norway on a mission to change history.

Jonathan Mills certainly had lofty ambitions for this comic. I read an interview where he described it as Saving Private Ryan meets The Time Machine. At the risk of sounding harsh, it really fails to live up to that pedigree.

Well, first of all let me give credit where it is due. This comic has absolutely gorgeous art. This is certain par for course with Kickstart, the publisher of this and several other great comics; no relationship to Kickstarter.

Anyway, in terms of pacing this comic does reasonably decent. It feels a bit fast at the beginning, but it somewhat evens out. On the other hand, it takes over halfway through the comic before Ben travels back in time. It felt like the scenes in the past could have used a tad more attention than they got. One of my complains with Kickstart is that their books tend to be around 96 pages, but the writers clearly need more room to tell their stories.

Okay, let's talk alternate history. The time travel elements largely center around Knut Haukeld, an actual Norwegian resistance fighter from our world. He led several teams on raids of German heavy water production facilities in Norway. Ben, who is a descendent of Haukeld, is tasked with ensuring that the mission is a success.

Haukeld and his men were certainly brave and heroic; I'm not trying to deny that. However, they weren't the reason the Nazis never got the atomic bomb. Nazi scientists were forbidden from using any physics developed by Jewish physicists. This meant they were forbidden from using anything they might have helped them figured out how to make an atomic bomb. Moreover, Germany had at least eight different atomic bomb programs, all of whom competed against each other, and never cooperated. Nazi Germany didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of developing an atomic bomb.

Despite all of this, many works of alternate history act as though Germany was within fingers-lengths of developing a functioning atomic bomb. As stated about, this could not be further from the truth. Ironically, Imperial Japan was a lot closer to developing an atomic bomb. A few years ago cyclotrons were discovered in Korea. The Japanese put them there to avoid detection, and from recently discovered documents, it appears they might have only been months away from developing a working bomb. Of course, America's atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to all of that. Curiously, you don't see nearly as many alternate histories where Japan wins World War II, but I digress.

I found the Nazi occupied present day both unrealistic and a tad cliche. It felt a bit more like Nineteen Eighty-Four than a proper alternate history. I'm fairly certain the Nazi would have run into serious problems well before they would have been able to monitor everyone with security cameras 24/7. I also seriously doubt that there would be flying cars. Besides the technological limitations, there's way too many things that could go wrong as far as driving.

We also get hints that Norwegian has become a dead language. Yeah, considering how much the Nazis fetishized Nordic culture, there's no way that would happen. The comic opens in the city of New London, but appears to be built on the remains of old London. Slight problem, as it is mentioned that the Nazis nuked London. Shouldn't radiation be an issue?

Okay, so we've established that this comic has a lot going against it. So why do I still recommend it? Well, it is still enjoyable, in a turn-off your brain sort of way, as a science fiction action story. If you take it for what it is, it isn't half-bad as a action adventure comic. I got to learn about Knut Haukeld, so it wasn't completely without merit. Plausibility doesn't necessarily mean more entertaining. For example, Fatherland is generally considered a more plausible Nazi Victory scenario, but I always found it a tad boring. Heavy Water ain't high art, but it's reasonably entertaining.

Well, I think that covers everything I wanted to discuss about Heavy Water. I will see you guys next time.

Heavy Water

Comic Review: The Life Eaters

If you've been following this blog for a while you know that I love alternate history, and I love mythology.  So what happens when I find a comic that combines them both?  I'll save you the trouble.  Today we'll be taking a look at The Life Eaters by David Brin with art by Scott Hampton.  Also available from Comixology. 

The Life Eaters is an expansion of Brin's novella "Thor Meets Captain America."  No, not the ones you're probably thinking of.  The comic takes place in a world where Nazi Germany used the Holocaust as a form of mass necromancy to summon the Norse gods.  As a result, the Nazi are able to push themselves back from the brink of defeat.  They push the Allies out of Europe and succeed in conquering the British Isles and Russia.  World War II has dragged on into the 1960s.  The Nazis have their sights set on America, but the Allies continue to fight on thanks to the help of the trickster god Loki. 

The comic is divided into three parts, and part one is pretty much a straight-up retelling of "Thor Meets Captain America."  Personally, I found this to be the best part of the comic.  The artwork is done in a way that invokes the photorealistic watercolor style of Alex Ross.  The gods are all drawn reasonably mythologically accurate.  Thor has red hair and a beard.  Well, everyone except for Loki.  He's just as muscular as the other gods, even though the myths would suggest he has a more slender appearance.  He also has a long white beard, causing him to look a bit like Odin.  This leg of the story follows a man named Chris as he leads an expedition of Allie forces on a mission to Sweden.  Besides the issues with Loki's appearance, there's also the issue of how the expedition arrives in Sweden.  They take a submarine under the thinking that the Norse gods don't function well underwater.  This is simply untrue, as there are several aquatic Norse deities such as Aegir and his daughters the seven waves. 

Despite these criticisms, I did overall enjoy this part of the comic.  I liked how the gods are portrayed.  They view the Nazis as a source of sacrifices, but don't support Nazi ideology.  For example, when a black solider tries to attack Odin, and is killed by a priest, Odin immediately orders him to be given full funeral rights.  He says, essentially, "I want that brave man fighting at my side when Ragnarok comes."  It is also mentioned that the Nazi elites are losing their grip on power, and the priest of the Aesir are the ones who really run the reich these days.  The Aesir honor valor and courage even when their enemies are the ones expressing it.  Thor expresses a certain admiration for Chris's resilience. 

There's also a nice reference to the poem Old Norse poem "Grimnismal" when Odin mentions that his raven Muninn was killed when the Allies nuked Berlin.  In the poem Odin talks of his ravens Huginn and Muninn, thought and memory.  He fears the day Huginn does not return, but more does he fear that Muninn won't come back.  In other words, he's getting older, and he fears the day he will be nothing more than a senile old man who can't even form coherent thoughts. 

Brin mentioned that the whole reason The Life Eaters came to be was that he was trying to write a Nazi Victory alternate history, but couldn't think of a plausible way for it to happen.  He was also trying to rationalize the Holocaust, at least to himself.  Of course that the thing about the Holocaust.  As methodical as it was, it was also utterly irrational.  The Nazis had to ignore science to justify their slaughter.  Not to mention that the whole thing was actively detrimental to their war effort because of all the resources and manpower that were diverted. 

So the first third ends with Chris snapping Odin's spear Gungnir, and fatally wounding himself.  Still, it does give hope that one day mortal men will be able to rise up and defeat the gods.  Okay, so despite some minor flaws, it was a good start to the comic. 

The second part of the comic pick up the action in the 1970s.  The Nazis have conquered America and Canada, but they aren't unopposed.  The Japanese have used necromancy to summon the Shinto gods, the Indians have summoned the Hindu gods, and the various nations of Africa have summoned their gods.  The part of the story follows a young solider named Joseph Kasting has he finds himself drawn into the world of the underground Allied resistance.

I'd assumed that the Nazi's rituals worked because the Norse gods were dead.  Early Christian missionaries would claim that Ragnarok had already occurred, and that Norse Mythology was a prequel to the Bible.  However, it appears that you can create gods out of thin air by believing hard enough, and performing enough human sacrifice.  Still, it was an interesting idea to have other nations create their own gods.  We do get a taste of this as Joseph and his comrades engage Hindu gods in Cambodia.  The Norse gods don't do so well in tropical climates.  The Allies are operating for under the sea, but I've already explained why this doesn't work.  Again, flawed, but I liked how it expanded upon the initial world of the novella.  Although I did stop a horned helmet.  The Vikings did not wear horned helmets.  It is a misconception that comes from early archaeologist finding drinking horns next to helmets in burial mounds, and wrongly assume thing they went together. 

Part three is where things really start to come apart.  Joseph is tasked by the Resistance to stop Loki, who wasn't as trustworthy as he seemed, from bringing about Ragnarok.  The first flaw happens Joseph meets a coalition of Christians, Jews and Muslims.  They spend several scenes blabbering about how they've put aside their differences and love each other now.  Oh, bullshit. I highly doubt the Abrahamic Faith's would start loving each other, and stop trying to killed each other, just because pagan gods starred reappearing.  Also, the Christians use the ichthus because the Muslims find crosses offensive, which is even more bullshit.  To explain why we'd need to discuss the Crusades, and that's a conversation for another time.  The Abrahamic Coalition makes a big deal about how their faiths require no sacrifices, which is nonsense.  Judaism doesn't currently perform sacrifices, but only because of a lack of a temple in Jerusalem.  Christianity places a lot of significance on the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.  Muslims sacrifice plenty of sheep of Eid. 

Anyway, moving on.  The biggest problem I have with The Life Eaters is that it bit off more than it could chew.  It came up with interesting ideas, but didn't have nearly enough space to properly develop them.  As a result, the ending comes across as rushed and anti-climactic.  Moreover, the moral of "stop waiting for all-powerful beings to save you, and instead save yourself" came across as way more heavy-handed than in the first part.  Again, this comic was way too short.  It needed more time to properly develop its plot and world.

So, what are my final thoughts on The Life Eaters?  It certainly wasn't the worst alternate history comic I've ever read.  There was a lot to love about the first 2/3.  However, there was significant room for improvement.  Despite having a very interesting premise, the comic failed to make the most of it, and needed more room to properly develop its world. 

Well, I think that should do it for now.  I will see you all next time.

Anime Review: Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

I can't think of any way to open this review so let's get right to it. Today we'll be taking a look at the anime movie Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. It takes place in a world where Germany won the Battle of Stalingrad and conquered the Soviet Union. After that it wasn't long before all of Europe was under Germany's control. With Europe secured Germany began to turn its attention towards its former ally Japan. Despite a valiant effort Japan ultimately surrendered after Germany used atomic bombs. Shortly thereafter Japan was formally occupied by Germany.

Jin-Roh takes places during the 1960s. The Germans are beginning to pull out and Japan is finally getting some room to breathe. The Japanese government has instigated several rapid industrialization programs in order to boost their economy. Unfortunately, there's also quite a bit of social unrest as a result of these programs. Riots frequently breakout, socialist movements are getting worryingly popular and anti-government terrorists seem to get more numerous by the day. To restore law and order a special paramilitary police force known as the Kerberos Panzer Cops has been established.

The movie follows a member of the Panzer Cops named Kazuki Fuse. He's allways considered himself a loyal member of Kerberos, but he's shaken to his core after witnessing a young girl blow herself up during one of the riots. He finds himself increasingly drawn towards the girl's sister, Kei Amemiya. At the same time there's an ongoing investigation into a possible counterintelligence cell that has infiltrated the Panzer Cops. This cell is known by the name Jin-Roh.

Okay, before we go any further we need to talk about how this movie came to be. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is based upon the Kerberos Cycle manga by Mamoru Oshii, who also helped with the production of the movie. It's actually the third adaption of the Kerberos Cycle. There are two live-action movies, The Red Spectacles and Stray Dog, which came out before Jin-Roh. Chronologically, however, Jin-Roh comes first since it takes place in the 1960s while the live-action movies take place in the 1990s. Mamoru Oshii has also been involved with several classic anime films such as AKIRA and Ghost in the Shell. Now let's examine the alternate history itself.

Plausibility wise this movie is probably on the softer side. Nazi Germany never had any plans to expand into East Asia or to stab Japan in the back. Then there's the reason Japan fell to Germany: the atomic bomb. For multiple reasons Germany was nowhere near developing atomic bombs in our world, and they wouldn't be any closer in the world of Jin-Roh. On the flip side, the socioeconomic situation in post-occupation Japan is a bit more believable because it echoes the real world. We see several left-wing movements gaining popularity, particularly among the youth, just like in our world's Japan in the 1950s. The rapid industrialization and urbanization, along with all of the resulting problems, parallels South Korea during the 1960s and 1970s.

Now let's talk about the art style. Nine times out of ten if you watch an anime it's probably going to employ the standard anime art style. The technically term for this is Mukokuseki, which roughly translates as statelessness. This often employed to add visual diversity to a cast characters and make them easier to differentiate. Jin-Roh falls into the remaining one tenth that forgo Mukokuseki in favor of a more realistic art style. Personally, I tend to favor the typical anime look, but Jin-Roh's art style does make for an interesting change of pace.

This movie has really great atmosphere to it. It has a very gritty and cynical feel to it, and there's shades of grey all around. The terrorist may have legitimate grievances, but their violent and destructive methods aren't serving anyone. The Panzer Cops are certainly necessary to maintain order and protect the populous, but they have to resort to increasingly harsh measures to do so. At the end of the day nobody really looks that good, and there really aren't any easy answers. This is very much a movie steeped in cynicism, and if you're the kind of person who likes happy endings you might be disappointed.

There's a lot of wolf imagery throughout the movie. For example, the members of the Panzer Cops frequently get compared to wolves and their organization's flag features a wolf. The original version of Little Red Riding Hood also features prominently throughout the movie. If you're not familiar with that version, I won't give the ending away. I will, however, mention that in the original version there was no woodsman. The guns, uniforms and vehicles are all clearly German and very accurately depicted. This does make sense, given that Germany has only recently pulled out of Japan.

Overall I found this movie to be enjoyable, but there were a few minor flaws here and there. I felt like Fuse and Kei's relationship could have been developed just a bit more. The pacing of the movie also felt like it got a bit rushed towards the end. It's not really a flaw, but I do kind of wonder what happened to America in this world. Granted, the movie is focused on Japan, so that wouldn't be plot relevant, but I still wonder about how America fared.

The English language dub is absolutely top-notch, and the whole cast does a great job. The English dub was licensed by Bandai Entertainment, which closed its North American division a few years ago. Fortunately, Discotek Media was rescued the license and re-released Jin-Roh on DVD and Blu-ray.

Well there you have it. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is a dark and cynical alternate history political thriller. If you enjoy darker anime movies you won't want to miss this one. Well, time for me to find some more anime movies to review for you guys. I will see you all next time.

Book Review: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Unless you've been living under a rock you've no doubt heard about Amazon's adaption of Philip K. Dick's seminal alternate history novel The Man in the High Castle.  It is a widely considered a classic in the alternate history community, and with good reason.  I quite enjoyed the first season of The Man in the High Castle, and I intended to review it at some point.  Before I can do that, however, I thought it would be best to review the book that the series is based upon.  That is precisely what we're going to do in today's post. 

The Man in the High Castle takes place in the year 1962 in a world in which the Axis Powers won World War II.  The United States has been devised between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  This is due to FDR getting assassinated in the 1930s and America going isolationist.  Everything east of the Rockies is under German control, everything west of the Rockies is under Japanese control and the Rockies themselves are a neutral zone between the two territories.  The book is told from the points of view of a wide variety of characters who are all average citizens going about their lives in an alternate America. 

What can you say that hasn't been said about a classic?  Well I'm going to give it my best shot anyway.  I'll start by saying that I'm going to avoid comparing the book to its adaptation; I'll save that for my review of the series. Anyway, let's get on with the review.

The writing style in this book had an almost meditative quality to it.  I suppose it's rather fitting, give that Dick intended it to be a meditation on the nature of reality.  Fun fact, Phillip K. Dick actually consulted the I Ching while writing this book, much like the character who wrote The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.  What is The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?  It's a book within a book that depicts a world in which the Axis Powers lost World War II.  However, it depicts the Cold War as being fought between the United States and British Empire, with the British coming out on top due to their ethnic purity.  Dick almost seems to be commenting on the process of creating alternate histories, and the personal biases that are often included there in, with his use of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.  

This commentary is especially interesting when you consider that the alternate history genre was in its infancy at the time.  There had been previous examples, such as Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, but The Man in the High Castle was the first alternate history novel not to use time travel or supernatural means as its point of divergence.  Well, if you want to get technical that sort of alternate history has been around since Livy in the Roman Empire, but typically alternate history as a genre is agreed to have begun in the mid-20th century.  It also notable that he portrays his characters with all of the biases and social mores that you'd expect from such a world rather than having them be defiant and adhere to modern standards of morality.   

I liked the fact that the book was told from the perspectives of average people.  They're quite a diverse group, you get everyone from an antiques dealer in San Francisco, to a member of the Japanese occupation government, to a woman on a quest for the truth and plenty more such characters.  Some of my favorite scenes to read about in alternate history, and speculative fiction in general, are those that involve average people going about their lives.  You really get a sense of the worlds these stories are set in that way.  It what I loved so much about Paulo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.  Both books involve characters from across the social spectrum of their worlds going about their lives, and whose individual stories eventually combine to form an overarching plot. 

And speaking of plot, let's talk about that.  There really isn't a plot per se.  Like I said, it starts off as a series of individual vignettes that eventually come together to form something of an overarching plot.  It moves at an easy pace and really gives you time to get to know these characters and the world that they live in.  Though there are some plots threads early on, such as the growing potential for a war between Germany and Japan, as well as Julianna Frink's journey to find Hawthorne Anderson, the titular Man in the High Castle.  As stated above, the novel really questions the nature of reality.  Throughout the book many characters get hints that their world might not be all that really, and one character even travels to our world briefly dude to intense mediation. There's even hints that our own world might not be the true reality.  

So yeah, you come for the fascist dystopia but you stay for the Taoism.  So how does the alternate history itself rate in terms of plausibility?  By modern standards it's pretty shaky and implausible, but you have to understand where Dick was coming from.  In 1962 a lot of the information about World War II that we take for granted was still heavily classified, so there was only so much that Dick could work with.  I think of it kind of like those old science fiction novels that depict Mars and Venus as habitable worlds, because at the time they were written that was the prevailing scientific thought.  Also, The Man in the High Castle is one of those novel, but again it was 1962.  That's also the reason the book is set in 1962, because that was the present day when Dick wrote the book.  

It is somewhat odd that Dick included elements from Chinese culture, such as the I Ching and Taoism, given his loves of Japanese culture.  Admittedly, sometimes conquering cultures adapt elements from the nation's they conquer, such as how Britain gained a few Hindi words and a love affair with curry after they conquered India.  Plus we do see that, slowly but surely, Japan's American possessions are starting to develop a Japanese-American hybrid culture.  The scene that feature Japanese character fawning over artifacts from America's past are especially humorous if you happen to be an anime fan.  Japanese-Occupied-America is depicted as better than Nazi-occupied-America, but that really isn't saying much because...well, Nazis.  It's kind of like asking if you would rather be executed by firing squad or lethal injection.  Consider also that American culture began to loosen up and liberalize during the 1960s, so perhaps this alternate Japanese youth culture has followed suit. Mind you, Dick has always had a strong anti-fascism theme to his novels, so I don't think he was trying to whitewash Japan's war crimes. 

I don't want to give too much away about the ending, but I will say that it certainly gives you something to think about.  The characters don't get any solid answers, but that kind of works given the nature of the book.  Dick deliberately left things open-ended because he was planning to write a sequel set in the Nazi occupied half of America, but he found the research into Nazi Germany to be too draining and soul crushing for that.  Among other things, the sequel would have featured the Nazis discovering a portal into our world and it would have delved deeper into the Japanese-American hybrid culture emerging on the West Coast.  A couple of Dick's other novels started out as sequels to The Man in the High Castle, but they later became their own thing. 

I don't usually talk about covers, but I think it's relevant here.  I had a hard time picking the cover image for this post simply because most cover for The Man in the High Castle typically don't accurately portray North America as described in the book.  They'll either leave out the Neutral Zone or else overinflate the Japanese territory.  The other problem is that they'll typically only feature Nazi imagery even though the over welcoming majority of the book takes place Japan's American territory.  Germany's American territory, and the Reich as a whole, is only mentioned in passing, though what is mentioned is certainly chilling.  So I went with a simple flags and black background cover, but why don't I show you those other covers?

Don't get me wrong, they're all swell covers, but I feel the accurately portray the book.  For comparison's sake here's a map form the Amazon adaption. 

As you can see it fits the description the book provides much better.  Speaking of adaptations, let's talk about the audiobook.  There's actually been three versions over the years.  I listened to the second version, narrated by Tom Weiner.  The previous version was narrated by George Guidall, and the new version is narrated by Jeff Cummings.  Of all three versions I liked Tom's narration the best.  I'm usually opposed to tie-in covers, but in the case of the Jeff Cummings edition it actually kind of works.  It does a much better job of showing what the book is about than the previous audiobook covers.  Plus, even though based on the adaptation, they actually put effort into the cover instead of slapping on a poster for the Amazon adaptation and calling it a day.  And here is that cover.  

The Man in the High Castle was the first Philip K. Dick novel I ever read, and I can see why he's so highly thought of as a writer.  It's also one of my favorite alternate history novels.  I don't like playing the favorites game, but it's definitely at the top of the list.  It's considered classic for a reason.  Typically speaking, if you ask an average to name an alternate history novel, assuming they know what you're talking about, The Man in the High Castle will be the only one they will know.  This novel was also the first alternate history novel to win the Hugo Award.  It's a classic for a reason, and I can certainly see why.

Well hopefully this review has wetted your appetite, and now that I've reviewed the book I can review the Amazon adaptation.  Though I've got some other things planned, so that might not be for a bit.  If you guys want I can review some more classic speculative fiction in the future.  In fact, I think I will.  I think that's enough from me for now.  I will see you guys next time.