SLEDGEHAMMER 44 #1 (of 2)WRITER: Mike Mignola, John Arcudi
ARTIST: Jason Latour
COLORS: Dave Stewart
Publication Date: March 13, 2013
Price: $3.50
Publisher: Dark Horse
UPC: 76156818145600111
Hellboy and B.P.R.D stories are usually dropped in time rich after WWII and Hellboy’s origin.
This particular story is right in the middle of the war, in 1944 with grunts, cigarettes, nets over the helmets and classic call backs to the classic comics of Joe Kubert or Joe Simon. This two parter expands the Hellboy-verse to include a man in a suit of armor charging at a Nazi foothold in France after being dropped in the shell of a Blockbuster bomb onto the battlefield.
The U.S. soldiers on the ground are given strict orders to be backup for the behemoth Project Epimetheus aka Sledgehammer 44. Nazi soldiers are no match for the super-powered suit, but the Germans counter with an enormous S.S. robot that crashes it’s way out of the enemy armory it is protecting. The Lost in Space looking armored enemy gets the upperhand on the Allied weapon and our boys retreat, dragging the mysterious knocked out Sledgehammer back to base camp. Will the Nazi’s catch up to finish off old Sledgy?
Jason Latour gives us great pages of classic looking comic art on this war story. The design of our new hero is all Mignola, but the storytelling is textbook Kubert School and all details wonderfully rendered in a classic illustrative line.
The book was intended for the late John Severin to draw and collaborate on with Mignola and Arcudi. The Marvel artist passed away in 2012, and rather than shelve the script, the book was released and dedicated to the master penciller with reverence to his memory.
My only complaint is that this book is only two issues! We hope to see more of our WWII ‘Ironed Man’ in the future.
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