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Children Of The Grave
Rare book
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 5, 2006
About the author
Tom Waltz
739 books56 followersTom Waltz is the Senior Staff Writer and Editor in IDW Publishing, better known as the writer of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titles.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 23, 2022
terrible
Three soldiers are visited by ghosts of their past while on the hunt for a cliched terrorist in a made up country. Everything about this was just bad.
Three soldiers are visited by ghosts of their past while on the hunt for a cliched terrorist in a made up country. Everything about this was just bad.
September 14, 2022
What Worked For Me:
- The story is a quick enough read.
- To the story's credit, it does also include some bonus content after the main work wraps up such as alternate cover art and eight pages of a superhero comic.
- Things do get somewhat gory, if you're into that. Then again, the story also depicts scenes of .
What Didn't:
- I'm not a conflict mediation specialist, nor an expert in the politics of the Middle East. The idea that a group of American soldiers could solve anything in "Stinwan" by bullets and blades alone, though, is ludicrous. (As an aside, Stinwan is likely a proxy for Iraq or possibly Afghanistan; there seem to be clear references to Kurdistan, too.)
- The main antagonist, Assan, says that, "Americans do tend to surrender to compassion and complacency whenever your enemies are on the brink of annihilation." I guess this is meant to position Assan as more extreme and the protagonists as more "in the right," but to me it just read as the words of an America-apologist put in the mouth of a strawman.
- Two of the "Orphans" (the name for the covert ops team that the story focuses on) trade pretty openly in racial stereotype. The Hispanic character, "Little Pete," grew up in East LA and regularly inserts a small selection of Spanish phrases into his speech (e.g. pendejo and amigo). Another is an African American who never knew his father and who's mother was raped and killed in front of him before the age of 10. Adding "super soldier" on top of these attributes do not a rounded character make. (Also, the leader of the group is a white guy, because of course he is.)
- This is more a matter of taste than an "objective" observation, but I didn't especially like the art style. I found it "Liefeld-esque." Take that for what you will.
- It's hard not to feel like the intro at the beginning of the work oversold Children of the Grave. Oof. Also, though this is a spoiler, .
Conclusion:
Unless you're really desperate for something to read, I would skip this one. The most charitable reading I could offer is that the work, "shows its age," (it was originally published in 2006). Ultimately, I left the work feeling that it had little to say beyond, "terrorism bad," and that the violence and gore was an attempt to appeal to a more mature audience with little in the way of nuance.
- The story is a quick enough read.
- To the story's credit, it does also include some bonus content after the main work wraps up such as alternate cover art and eight pages of a superhero comic.
- Things do get somewhat gory, if you're into that. Then again, the story also depicts scenes of .
What Didn't:
- I'm not a conflict mediation specialist, nor an expert in the politics of the Middle East. The idea that a group of American soldiers could solve anything in "Stinwan" by bullets and blades alone, though, is ludicrous. (As an aside, Stinwan is likely a proxy for Iraq or possibly Afghanistan; there seem to be clear references to Kurdistan, too.)
- The main antagonist, Assan, says that, "Americans do tend to surrender to compassion and complacency whenever your enemies are on the brink of annihilation." I guess this is meant to position Assan as more extreme and the protagonists as more "in the right," but to me it just read as the words of an America-apologist put in the mouth of a strawman.
- Two of the "Orphans" (the name for the covert ops team that the story focuses on) trade pretty openly in racial stereotype. The Hispanic character, "Little Pete," grew up in East LA and regularly inserts a small selection of Spanish phrases into his speech (e.g. pendejo and amigo). Another is an African American who never knew his father and who's mother was raped and killed in front of him before the age of 10. Adding "super soldier" on top of these attributes do not a rounded character make. (Also, the leader of the group is a white guy, because of course he is.)
- This is more a matter of taste than an "objective" observation, but I didn't especially like the art style. I found it "Liefeld-esque." Take that for what you will.
- It's hard not to feel like the intro at the beginning of the work oversold Children of the Grave. Oof. Also, though this is a spoiler, .
Conclusion:
Unless you're really desperate for something to read, I would skip this one. The most charitable reading I could offer is that the work, "shows its age," (it was originally published in 2006). Ultimately, I left the work feeling that it had little to say beyond, "terrorism bad," and that the violence and gore was an attempt to appeal to a more mature audience with little in the way of nuance.
May 15, 2018
Military Action and Ghost Horror, you don't see a lot of stories with that mix and that's my jam but this book was just an okay read. The story is gritty and grounded. Most of the characters in this book have traumatic pasts, "ghosts" that keep haunting them. They're drawn like superheroes and it's kind of distracting. The team of three American soldiers in this book find themselves operating in an area where mass graves of children have been inexplicably emptied. They dream horrible things from their past and feel creeped out by the fact that the bodies of mass murdered children vanished without a trace. They report their findings to command who find empty graves sufficient evidence to take out a known terror group. LT, the team's leader has repeated encounters with an undead ghost girl. The characters themselves even though they share stories past they're still kind of generic. The East L.A. character Lil Pete really didn't seem authentic. He grew up in an East L.A. Orphanage after his parents died. East Los isn't that big unless I completely missed it but there isn't an orphanage here in East L.A.. Also he " survived East L.A. Battlegrounds " okay there were drive by shootings in the 90s but it wasn't so bad I couldn't walk to the park with my cousins as 10 year olds. East L.A. isn't Predator 2. The action in the book is brutal, sometimes cheesy. There are graphic scenes of sexual assault so this book is definitely not for kids. I appreciated the spiritual elements but the book could've benefited from better developed characters.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 3, 2021
A propaganda comic for white (American) superiority at best, and an islamophobic comic at worst.
An almost a 100 page long book, with the image of the 'civilized' white man at its crux, with a dash of poorly written survivor's guilt, and oodles and oodles of a chauvinistic image of uncultured, poor Kilpanese women and children.
And of course, terrorists taking Allah's name randomly across the pages scattered around empty graves.
Wouldn't recommend. Already regret these 20 minutes I'm never getting back.
An almost a 100 page long book, with the image of the 'civilized' white man at its crux, with a dash of poorly written survivor's guilt, and oodles and oodles of a chauvinistic image of uncultured, poor Kilpanese women and children.
And of course, terrorists taking Allah's name randomly across the pages scattered around empty graves.
Wouldn't recommend. Already regret these 20 minutes I'm never getting back.
May 5, 2022
La narrazione è tremendamente lenta, non riesce a essere accattivante, ci si perde appresso ai pensieri e all'interiorità di fin troppi personaggi girando attorno all'azione, che non riesce a dare dinamicità all'opera nella sua globalità.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews