Hexagon Comics -The Partisans 3: War's End

 

7x10 square bound comic, 

48 pages 

b&w
ISBN-13: 978-1-64932-333-0.

 US$10.95

https://www.hexagoncomics.com/shop-the-partisans-3-wars-end.html

cover: Luciano Bernasconi

THE FIRST DAY 
Story:: J.-M. Lofficer; Art: Mario Guevara 

THE LAST DAY 
Story: Thierry Mornet; Dialogues: J.-M. Lofficer; Art: Luciano Bernasconi 

Spring 1945. The end of the Second World War is near... Paris has just been liberated... The Germans are retreating everywhere... The Americans are coming... However, there is still time for some desperate missions, such as stopping a last train of Jewish children from being taken by the Nazis to the death camps!
 
The Guardian of the Republic and Marianne, Baroud and Princess Sadko of the Partisans, will each face incredible obstacles in order to halt this abominable project. And their success will only come at the price of the blood shed for some of them...
 
But while one war is about to end, another, perhaps even more violent and merciless one, is already beginning...
 
These two sagas from the last days of the Second World War have been created by Thierry Mornet & Luciano Bernasconi, and Jean-Marc Lofficier & Mario Guevara.


The strongest story was  The First Day Guevara's art on this looks almost pencil and washes. It's quite effective.  With the Princess shot down by a traitor will we ever learn what the Crimen Project is?! This is certainly the best of this volume.

It was interesting to see Bernasconi's art as the Guardian of the Republic faces a tough fight and a fight that could prove fatal but along the way he meets his 21st century counterpart and Dr Omega.  Will this be the 1940s Guardian of the Republic's final battle?

Hopefully we will see vengeance over the shooting and betrayal of the Princess and the Allies but only time will tell. Perhaps things will move on to the Cold War?

A fun read.

addenda. I am old and daft and forget, Jan Marc was kind enough to correct me re Crimen:

"In the review of PARTISANS #3, you seemed to wonder what "CRIMEN" was.

"The answer is, it is our Hydra as CLASH is our SHIELD. All were created in the 60s to capitalize on the success of BOND and UNCLE.

"CRIMEN was introduced in our CLASH TPB.

"Where we differ from the model is, we connected to the 1800 British criminal societies. Reread the GUARDIAN OF THE REPUBLIC / COUNT ST GERMAIN / JOHN MIST issue and the STRANGERS ORIGIN: HOMICRON for more.

"There you'll see an older rick Ross/Baroud, as well as his son (or grandson now with the sliding timescale?) the new BAROUD.

"For a more detailed appearance see GUARDIAN OF THE REPUBLIC #1.

"In addition to the connection to the 1800 crime societies which I think is original,  making patriotic WWII hero Rick Ross into a villain is I think rather unique.

"The next PARTISANS will take place at the time of the founding of the UN and will show how Rick Ross created the modern-day CRIMEN."

Thank you, JM!