The war is over. Or is it? For some it won't ever be over. One of these is the rabbit Hardin who steals secret information and sets in motion events that could change everything.
Iron: Or, The War After
by Shane-Michael Vidaurri
Archaia
December 2012
Hardin takes the stolen intel to a group of confederates with a plan to destroy a key transportation hub. But when the Regime comes looking for Hardin a stray bullet changes everything leaving the Resistance in disarray. It's difficult to tell too much more of the story without spoilers, but it is not too much to say that the bullet and what comes next will reverberate from the youngest to the most powerful in both the Regime and the Resistance.
The story is interesting however the reader is thrust into the action without enough background to fully understand the story and I found myself floundering trying to figure out who was who and even who was the good guy. By default I tend to consider resistance fighters as the oppressed morally right side, but here, without details about the war that already happened, it's very difficult to come to that conclusion. Sure there are some in the Regime that are clearly evil. But is Harden's act even remotely less evil?
The art is stylish and moody for the subject matter, but the characters are wooden and mostly inexpresive. I was disappointed not because the art is bad, but because it's so dispassionate that I couldn't muster up enough emotion to care about any of the characters or really how things turned out. That constitutes failure in my book.
As a fan on Archaia, a publisher that is known for high quality graphic novels, I come into each new book with fairly high expectations. In the case of this book, my expectations may have proven too high. This is a bland and often confusion story with artwork that fails to inspire.
