4 out of 5

Panzerfaust is the most oblique of Wiebe’s writing, lacking an initial hook to bring a reader in, and yet it is the one that has gotten him the most attention because of its concept – a re-imagining of Peter Pan during WWII.  From the detailed and paced presentation of the story, it’s apparent that Wiebe has done his work both into the history and the original story, but I do wonder how far he’d be allowed to take this without the publicity boost.  I mean, I saw the movie Peter Pan, but book?  What?

But you see a rating of 4 out of 5.  So: why?  Well, because Wiebe is still an incredibly talented writer, and as I’ve noted elsewhere, has this unique blend of scope and adventure from issue to issue so that you feel like things are developing but are never disappointed for waiting for a plot point.  Panzerfaust suffers a bit from a “reveal” factor, issues punctuated by… and here’s Wendy! or something similar, but otherwise this is just a fun children’s action adventure set to the serious backdrop of war, “inspired” by Pan instead of being a rip set in a different world or time, which is the direction I feel most authors would go for.  It takes the core sensibilities and reapplies them.  The format is pretty remarkable as well, a reporter in modern times hunting down those who knew Peter and getting their stories.  While the flashback method can ruin suspense, here it successfully builds Peter up.  Wiebe isn’t relying on cheap cliffhangers, he’s just trying to tell exciting stories, and the reverence Peter’s mates show for him when speaking to the reporter floods the readings with a very real sense of history.

Tyler Jenkins’s art is a majesty of sleek lines, but there are quite a bit of talking heads in the issues.  Just flipping through doesn’t really do it justice, as the moments of excitement are built to and tend to – not always, there are some page-splashing explosions – but tend to be minor triumphs or escapes as our band of lost boys run from safe haven to safe haven.

I’ve pretty much pushed every Wiebe book as a positive and Panzerfaust stays with that push, although it’s not the first book I’d give to a diehard comic reader.  Instead, this goes in the Watchmen pile (yes, that’s right) of literary books, books that are made to be read as much as they are flipped through.