Uber: Invasion #4 - Avatar Press

UBER: INVASION No. 4, February 2017

Set “one week before the invasion of the United States of America”, and described by its author as “basically an overview of what had been going on in Great Britain” since its surrender to the Third Reich, Issue Four of “Uber: Invasion” is undeniably packed full of just the sort of espionage-orientated action the series’ long-standing audience would have come to expect from a story featuring Stephanie and Alan Turing. In fact, Kieron Gillen’s tale of the ‘heroine’ suddenly discovering a new battleship candidate in the shape of a tiny girl, and their subsequent somewhat bloody flight out of the country and across the Atlantic, really drives home that it’s been “over a year” since the Kerrang! Award-winner last gave the title’s de facto lead “things to say. Or things to do.”

Fortunately however, the Stafford-born writer’s narrative additionally allows newcomers to the comic book to appreciate “exactly who Stephanie is by the end of the episode” with its depiction of the female intelligence operative shockingly putting a gun against young Tamara’s head when she fears the Nazis will discover them, and cold-bloodedly arranging for H.M.H. Churchill to gorily squish the skulls of a couple of hapless German sentries checking their getaway truck with her massive bare hands; “Close your eyes, honey.” Of course, there’s always the Allied scientist’s ruthless destruction of an entire enemy submarine “two days after the Battle of Naugatuck”, courtesy of ‘the officer forgetting her second case’ after disembarkation, to help truly reinforce the character’s single-minded determination to “save the bloody colonials” and win the war…

Just as successful as Gillen’s wonderfully tense and enthralling penmanship, is Daniel Gete’s artwork for this twenty-two page periodical. Whether the illustrator is drawing the heavily overcrowded ‘testing’ scenes set within The White Lamb public house or a German Uber viciously tearing apart a young fleeing family with his halo effect, the penciller’s attention to minute detail, such as the pieces of broken furniture littering the floor after “a brewing experiment that’s gone messily amiss”, is captivating. Indeed, the artist alone single-handedly conveys all the traumatic terror of Stephanie and her juvenile ward, as they quietly cower within the mud of a deep furrow whilst a murderous Nazi super-soldier scours the area for them.

The regular cover art of "UBER: INVASION" No. 4 by Daniel Gete