Oh, DC, you’ve done it once again. You’ve tricked me into picking up one of your books thanks in part to a fantastic cover and shoveled me out utter nonsense. Star Spangled War Stories #6 Featuring G.I. Zombie is a nightmare of a production. The only thing holding this book together is some fairly decent writing and the amazing talent of cover artist Darwyn Cooke.
As this is number six in a series I never knew existed I figured I would be a little behind on whatever was going on, but I at least figured I would get some sort of synopsis of at least the last issue in the series. Alas, this is not the case as Star Spangled War Stories #6 just sort of happens and new reader (like me) will be beyond lost throughout the entire experience.
At first I thought this was G.I. Combat, a series that I initially followed during the initial New 52 run, but instead it features G.I. Zombie a character that has no reason for really existing other than to cash in on the the whole, not growing painfully tired, zombie craze of recent years. Either way this book will only leaving you scratching your head.
As neither the cover, nor the book easily explain anything, I can only imagine that G.I. Zombie is some soldier sporting a red shirt with red eyes that just sort of runs around being a complete asshole. Not only that, but he knocks out some lady (who is apparently important) and proceeds to rip off her shirt for… Well, I still don’t actually know why. I assume it’s just what zombies do now as I struggled to figure out why he did it.
The story follows some people working for a shady organization that is hold up waiting for some sort of terrible event to happen. New readers will have no idea what this is, but we do find out that it can’t have the peoples best intentions in mind as the United States government send in G.I. Zombie to “take care” of things in the compound. There are a lot of pieces here that all seem to belong to different puzzles, so the story is a disjointed mess that fails to pull off the intrigue aspect that I think the writer wanted.
DC gives me the story rundown as follows; “G.I. Zombie and his new team sink deeper and deeper into the zombie rabbit hole, as what they thought would be a shoot ’em up mission to take down a terrorist cell hits the fan! Curtain after curtain is pulled back on everything Jared thought he knew about the undead.”
Fair enough, but none of that actually happens as the story feels less like it’s pulling back curtains and more like I’m fighting with twenty other people to look through the same keyhole. If you have been following along things might make sense, but for the rest of us (again, without a synopsis) things read more along the lines of a Lewis Carroll nonsense poem.
But that isn’t what really makes Star Spangled War Stories a bad book -not even close. What really stands out is the appalling art-style used to portray this world that tries hard to make you think things are very serious. Things just look plain terrible on every page and on every panel. I know this may be a legitimate art-style, going for the minimalist idea, but it just doesn’t work here. It looks far removed from a serious tale of zombies and government coverups and more like an episode of China, IL after it’s been run through the wash with bleach, twice.
This is the first time in as long as I cant remember that I had to put a book down halfway through because I was so disappointed in its quality. I had to try very hard to finish this read and am angry that I paid actual money for it. While the book does pick up when G.I. Zombie gets to the party, it still is a slog of a read and is visually unappealing to the eyes. Star Spangled War Stories #6 looks like a book you’d get from the mid ’90s from a first time publisher after the speculator crash nearly killed the industry. It’s bad. Don’t get this one, even if you are a fan of the character included.
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