3 out of 5

Born in Belgium / living in America / publishing in French Jerry Frissen has, by that little bit of globe-trotting, had a unique voice for comics, a flatness – perhaps due to translation – that has given his humorous works to date (Lucha Libre, The Zombies That Ate the World) an amusingly juxtaposed deadpan to their ridiculous premises.  ‘World War X’ is certainly a more serious series – the X not a number but a letter probably denoting a War to End All Wars – and, unfortunately, this tone turns out not to be a device.  It matches, for the most part, as an ancient evil – Kharis – is awakened and both its spokesperson and the stoic Helius – Earth’s seeming protector – function appropriately as characters a bit outside of humanity and so can pass by speaking in a slightly odd patter; but it doesn’t overall benefit the book, which attempts to explode the scope of this threat through time – flashbacks to the 1200s – and space – catastrophes hitting worldwide – and, just like this chopped up sentence probably ain’t the best for precision purposes, Frissen has trouble effectively hitting plotting highs, pages cutting to different scenes at odd, unimpactful points.  Snejbjerg is a good match for Frissen, sharing his stiffness, but that also means he doesn’t do much to change these tone issues.

Still, the story is interesting, some high-level world-building and easy-in, easy-out sci-fi quickly setting up our focus and shucking excessive introductions without it feeling rushed.  We’re dropped right at the boiling point of the story, told what we’re needed, and released to watch.  And despite some minor hiccups, the translation is quality, and our batch of characters are enjoyable oddballs who aren’t off-putting assholes like in Lucha / Zombies.  As volume one ends with the phrase “It’s the end of the world,” perhaps the following volumes will be kicked fully into high gear such as to overwhelm Jerry’s monotone tendencies and really unleash the cool potential of this collection.

Some brief notes on the production: 15.99 seems a little steep for what’s essentially a hardcover prestige, but Titan has been establishing themselves as a source of these foreign volumes of interest, and if it ends up being the only way to grab some of this stuff, at least the binding / paper stock / colors are all high quality.  If it gets collected at the end as one book, though, that might be more price effective, as it probably only took me 15-20 minutes to read my 16 bucks.