U.S. soldiers arrive in a near deserted town with their Nazi prisoners and encounter beasts of a kind you never saw in Saving Private Ryan.
When I was a kid, I used to eat up DC’s Weird War Tales. I honestly thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, so you can imagine how I jumped at the chance to look at Iron Siege, a new three issue mini-series presented bi-monthly in Golden Age size which is being spruiked by the publisher as, “WWII with a horror twist!” Count me in, IDW!
Unfortunately, I don’t know whether I’ve become a different person a couple of decades on or whether a horror story set during World War II isn’t just a bit cliche in light of other media now out there which has also done this kind of story. Or perhaps this simply isn’t a very well done story in general? Maybe, and unfortunately, it’s a case of, “All of the Above” to some degree, because I was yawning halfway through and wanting to flick forward to the end, much to my own disappointment.
Trust me when I say that I was into the idea of this book and really wanted to like it, yet in the actual reading it was so predictable it felt like I was reading the book for the 20th time, not the first. A real case of, “I bet I know what will happen next,” that got the alarm bells ringing in my head right away.
Dialogue in the book is pretty sparse–you kind of have to apply your own character and motivation to the lead characters to care about them in any kind of perfunctory way. And I didn’t even like the look of the book artistically as the artwork just wasn’t to my personal taste. Yes, I really struck out on this one and that’s pretty worrying because, in theory, I’m probably part of the target market. After all, I’m someone who gets excited at the thought of a World War II horror story and reached for the book on that premise alone.
All told, however, I can’t recommend this one. Perhaps future issues will bring things around, but I can’t see a lot of room for the writers to maneuver and do something unexpected with just two issues left to flesh out and finish the tale.