Jackboot & Ironheel #2 - IDW Publishing

JACKBOOT & IRONHEEL No. 2, September 2016

Featuring a slavering green-eyed killer hound, some terrifying multi-tentacled creature at the bottom of a lake, and the putrefying living corpse of Muggenthaler, Issue Two” of “Jackboot & Ironheel” genuinely seems to live up to its creator’s aspiration as being a fantasy title packed full of “unearthly horrors”. However, in order to reach such scintillating supernatural shenanigans this twenty-two page periodical’s audience must first sadly, endure an incredibly ponderous start which follows both the “sinister” ‘SS’ officer Kommandant Von-Kleist as he bemoans the “decommissioning” of “this damned prison” and Gunter's illogical determination to allow Eddie Neale to try and play football with Sister Evangeline inside the prisoner of war’s cramped cell.

This tedious opening third really must have tested the patience of any causal bibliophile who picked the ‘creator-driven comic’ up from the magazine spinner rack, and arguably contains some truly disinteresting and unconvincing dialogue as the captive West Ham striker somehow persuades his German guard that instead of fighting one another their two countries should actually “sort out their differences on the football field… Just eleven men playing against eleven… fair and square!” It’s certainly hard to believe this thirty second conversation would not only convince Gunter that the Englishman isn’t his enemy, but subsequently influence the church’s Mother Superior to help the “number nine” escape over her chapel’s roof after she had previously warned her nuns not to get “too involved with the prisoners.”

Luckily, once doomed sentries Muller and Wilhelm decide the ‘best time’ to go looking for their superior officer’s hound in the nearby woodland is at night, the freelance illustrator’s script transforms itself into a thoroughly enjoyable, if not slightly clichéd, read. Indeed, the dog’s savaging of his would-be-rescuer’s intestines is just the start of a ghastly gore-fest which sees the tail-gunner swimming for his life away from buoyant zombies and a crewman aboard a Nazi gunboat being dragged down into the cold murky depths by a multi-limbed monstrosity; “I have you, Joachim, fear not! You’re safe… with meee!”

Perhaps the most disconcerting element of this comic though, is Millgate’s highly stylized, yet amateurish-looking, breakdowns. Often wooden and featuring the most rudimentary of details, the World War Two buff’s overly angular figures consistently ‘break’ any sort of spell which his narrative was trying to weave, and it truly appears to be a shame that none of the “amazing artists” lined up “to do all of the variant covers” ultimately materialised so as to reduce the burden of Max “writing, pencilling, inking and colouring the whole thing myself.”

The variant 'subscription' cover art of "JACKBOOT & IRONHEEL" No. 2 by Max Millgate