REVIEW: Dreaming Eagles #3

Since Aftershock Comics debuted back in December, they have been churning out nothing but amazing comic books. This is, in no small part, due to the fact that they picked up some great talent like Garth Ennis and Simon Coleby to create a book like Dreaming Eagles. A book based on true events, during WWII, about the Tuskegee Airmen.

While the entire series has the overarching theme about mistreatment of the black community throughout history, issue three really digs into the hopelessness of it all. With Garth on scripts and Simon on the art, you could really feel the despair. Both creators were damn near perfect in execution, with the exception of a minor lull in the story.

Near the middle of the issue, Garth was dangerously close to turning the script into a boring history book. He spent a good deal of the beginning issue explaining important figure heads for the Airmen, and what their plight was in late 1943 and early 1944. Which is fine, great actually, but not for 24 pages. That is something that anyone can go online and look up, spending a few minutes following the Wiki resources.

However, just when I felt my attention span lapse, Garth seemed to mock that emotion with Lee saying he needed to use the bathroom, and he sucked me back in with the story of Reggie“s first kill. This is why Garth Ennis is one of the best comic book writers of our time. He took the readers waning interest, and used it to his benefit. From there I could not take my eyes off the page, and Simon“s art aided me in that.

Just moving from panel to panel, it is clear that Simon is passionate about the story. His pencils and layouts remind me of some old Spider-Woman/New Mutants issues from Sienkiewicz. And his inks were a magnificent mixture of Totleben and Janson. The colors that he chose for each scene could not have been better. There was a sequence of pages in the rain that were particularly awe-inspiring and deserved to be at least recognized in this review. In addition, Simon did a great job with the dog fight scenes; a lot of time artists get messy with these scene, but he did a good job to avoid giving the readers vertigo.

All in all, this is a must buy issue, if not series. The art alone is worth the money, so adding in Garth“s scripts make it a steal. I give Dreaming Eagles #3, 5 out of 5.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Publisher:Â AFTERSHOCK COMICS

(W) Garth Ennis (A) Simon Coleby (CA) Francesco Francavilla

Author Profile

Dylan Hicks

I just graduated from MSUD with my BAS in Mathematics. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, and our two cats. I work full time for NTIA-ITS as a Computer Scientist. All I really do is engineer mathematical models and write code all day. I took up this second job at Comic Crusaders as a way to become more involved with the comic book community. Since I was a child I have loved comics. I grew up reading Spider-Man, Shi, New Mutants, Spider Woman, and Gen13. As I got older, however, my tastes started to shift from almost exclusively Marvel to various independent labels. Now I read a huge variety of comics: Valiant, Black Mask, Aspen, Avatar, Image, Dynamite, Boom, Aftershock, etc.. If anyone wants to know, my favorite publisher, hands down, is Valiant.
I am also working on writing a few comic books myself. I have about 4 ideas in the fire, but only 1 of them is really getting anywhere; I have 6 of the 10 books finished. In addition to writing, I am also a practicing colorist. If you want to checkout any of my writing samples, or coloring samples, please check out my DeviantArt and let me know what you think.
dirtgrubdylan.deviantart.com.
Some more about me? I love black metal and video games. I usually spend most of my time hanging out with my girlfriend. We have been together for 6 years, so at this point she is basically my best friend. But when I am not with her, I get together with my friends to drink some beer and play some Magic, the Gathering. And, as pretentious as this is, I am also working on starting my own engineering firm. So that involves me reading a lot of textbooks on Mathematics and Computer Science.
So yeah, if you have made it this far thank you very much! I am crazy excited to start my career in writing. Let's see what I can do with this.