Uber #6 - Avatar Press

UBER No. 6, September 2013

“Uber” creator Kieron Gillen has acknowledged that the overarching narrative to this comic book series is “ridiculously complicated with an enormous cast”. In fact one of the experiences he has strived to provide its readers is a feeling as to “the confusion of war.” But such a potentially 'uninviting and off-putting' storyline saw this title witness a steady fall in its circulation figures during 2013, to the point where with just 10,747 copies being sold in October of that year it was actually being bested by the likes of “Sonic The Hedgehog” and “Peter Panzerfaust”.

With this issue however the British writer ‘pretty much starts again’ and at the time of its publication proclaimed “if you’re looking to jump aboard, this would be a good place to do so”. As a result however, any reader anticipating being immersed in the fallout from the Battle of Paris and horrifically gory demise of H.M.H. Colossus was presumably bitterly disappointed. For despite Caanan White’s bloody regular cover illustartion depicting the hastily attired British Tankmen duking it out with their rival Panzermenschs, this edition is actually the first of a two-part story-arc concentrating on the Battle of Okinawa in the Pacific theatre.

Fortunately Gillen does an incredible job of quickly reacclimatizing any long-time bibliophiles of this book to the sudden change of scenery. Whilst simultaneously assimilating any new perusers of this periodical with a vivid, profanity-charged crash course as to the ‘final days’ of the Japanese Empire’s war against the United States of America.

Having so immersed his readership in well-researched historical fact the former music journalist then sets about “disrupting” that knowledge with the introduction of three of the Emperor’s “enhanced humans” just “one mile west of US Navy radio picket station two.” These Miyoko warriors are equally as powerful and deadly as their European counter-parts and, rather disturbingly for the Allies, seem to have been “manufactured” first.

Despite this comic, in the main, being a far more factually accurate endeavour than some of the previous issues, artist Caanan White still manages to include the odd grisly panel depicting the disruption halo’s mutilating effect upon human anatomy. For the most part though the African-American penciller is constrained to wonderfully drawing weapons of war such as Kamikaze fighter planes, the ‘nearly 70,000 ton battleship’ Yamoto and ‘bushwhacked’ American marines.

The variant cover art of "UBER" No. 6 by Caanan White