Review: The Light & Darkness War
Story by Tom Veitch | Art by Cam Kennedy
A comic created out of the consequences of the Vietnam War, the veterans who fought, died and the ones who came home, but were never fully restored - The Light & Darkness War transports the reader into a world where the dead soldiers continue to live on and fight against an oncoming darkness of zombie soldiers that want to pass from the world of the dead into our physical reality.
The Light & Darkness War is not easily categorized and it becomes apparent why when you realize it is the brain child of Star Wars and Animal Man writer and artist, Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy. Multiple planes of existence are created, while we follow the story of Vietnam veteran, Lazarus Jones aka Laz.
After an especially traumatic visit to the Veterans Memorial Wall, Laz falls into a coma and discovers his brothers-at-arms are still alive and he has his legs again. His brothers explain the fight between the light and the dark, ancient races that are turned into a sort of Siri tech called Menteps who fight for the light, heal them, and steer their ships.
They are fighting against Lord Na and his forces, who have found a way to contact the physical world and seek to transport laser beams and other weapons from Earth into the world of the undead. Lord Na uses Nikola Tesla & his psychic companion Delpha as an unwitting pawn to break through the worlds. Lord Na continues to gain power through a combination of manipulation, weapons and magic, and eventually shows himself to be the tyrant that he is. (His tyrant face is so ugly.)
Eventually Laz is forced to make a choice between the physical world and the world he has come to know, with his friends, where he is once more a man and a soldier. The worlds continue to bleed into each other at the destructive hands of Lord Na and the egomaniacal mind of Tesla.
This is not necessarily a comic I would have picked up at first glance, but by the end it made me a believer and I did enjoy it. The story is quite lengthy and you feel it going through, but the drawings and the overall story being told beckon the reader to look closer and continue. Another plus for me are the strong female characters we see throughout, each with their own motivations and characteristics.
