Disconnected Filler
Sigh. Look, it's better than the Green Lantern banner because I get the point of this one. It's not hyping a movie that didn't need extra hype, and its for a good cause. But it doesn't change the fact that the "We Can Be Heroes" banner is a huge detriment to the covers its on. It's a shame because Men of War always has phenomenal covers, and this one is no exception. The intense detail and muted color scheme of the two men contrasts highly with the simple and bright copy past field of flowers.
So instead of the continued adventures of Sgt. Rock, we get two extended co-features. And I have to say, it doesn't really work. See, what made Men of War so interesting with Sgt. Rock was the blend of gritty war with the unique world feel of the DC Universe. All the backups, save two, have been gritty war stories, or war stories with a message. So we get two of those.
The first one has the same artist as the 3-part co-feature of the first 3 issues, but definitely a different colorist or something. His art wasn't super interesting to begin with, but now all the characters are disjointed from the backgrounds, obliterating any chance of immersion. And the fight scenes are extremely static, like pin ups of people in fight poses. The story is pretty interesting, the constant third party narration and the heroic soldier. But it just feels empty. Who is this guy? Why should we care? Any relation to Sgt. Rock? Any relation to the DC Universe at all? The pacing is great and all, but it doesn't really do anything to make me interested, and the story itself is fairly generic. The narration and some of the visuals in the poppy field are the only things that kept me going.
The second story was much better written and illustrated, but suffered from a lot of the same problems. It was about a soldier adjusting to civilian life. Ok, sure, I get the message, but when that's all there is I don't really care as much. I understand the meaning, but it's obvious that that's all there is. To its credit there's a lot of great touches. The flow is very vague in a way that works, the art is done in a fantastic style, where the dark and simple color palate of the war scenes create a huge juxtaposition to the complex variety of bright colors in civilian life, and the emotions hit me much harder. The emptiness the the final page gripped my heart for a second.
But neither story really makes me care. I enjoyed them decently, the second one more so, but neither of them felt like they held any meaning or value to the series. Sgt. Rock's story has been a unique one to follow, but suddenly its over without any resolution or much of anything conclusive. And now we just have filler.
In Conclusion: 2/5
I wanted to like this issue. I really did. James Robinson and J.T. Krul have both done some fantastic stuff, and some terrible stuff. Neither of them wrote anything particularly bad here, but neither of them could overcome the fundamental flaw of this issue, that it just doesn't feel like it means anything. Two short stories about war. It doesn't even feel like it's a DC comic. Nothing about it ties it to anything whatsoever besides real wars. Again, they're pretty good stories, but it's just about impossible to make me enjoy them as much as I could if I read them as individual short comics somewhere else, on their own, not as part of a series or even a shared universe.