1 out of 5

Writer Geoffrey D. Wessel remarks, in the backmatter, that the springboard phrase / idea for War Birds was “droids in love.” It took several years for the project to come together, in this GN form and with artist Steve Parkhouse, but regardless of the time gap – I don’t know that that was ever really an original idea. Not that the seed of a project needs to be, necessarily, but that’s definitely something holding this tale back: it never really seems like it evolves past that single line pitch, either in setup, the setting surrounding it, the execution of it, or its aftermath: it is as though that was the entirety of the idea, and the rest of the story is just padding to prop it up.

And that could still be fine as a kind of floofy sci-fi lite exercise, except Wessel attempts to push things to profundity, and social commentary, without the language (or much real sci-fi groundwork) to support that. Yes, Wessel could not have predicted how current day events (from 2022 and onward) might’ve affected his story of ongoing warfare in Turkey, but, again, it’s as though there was some mighty tunnel vision here: the battle and setting are presented with incredible shallowness and impossibly trite “tomorrow will be better” vibes via a ‘loves saves the day’ theme that has a young Turkish woman helping our two crushing on each-other, AI-evolved drones break out from the command of the evil US troops (whose commanders laugh when giving orders to kill; i.e. we’re just missing some mustaches to twirl).

In one of the collection of half-considered plot threads, the robos make contact with the woman through an online MMORPG, and if you’re writing some connection in your head about remote relationships, sure, go ahead, but it’s not in the text – like most of this, that detail is happenstance, and is treated with a level of depth and visual thought matching that.

Regarding which: Steve Parkhouse, though glowing towards the book in his foreword, feels like something of a mish-mash. His skill for conversation pacing, and adding acting to talking heads, gets fair play, but his visual inventiveness is locked behind some very generic drone designs (like stock pulp sci-fi robots), and the war torn setting is bereft of the ability to add much sense of place, which is also where he tends to excel. With some more opportune editing – scenes are just slotted in, page by page, no transition (charitably, perhaps a remnant of the script evolving from what was originally intended as a web series?) – War Birds’ soap opera might’ve had more runway for immersion, but there are too many roadblocks in the way for that as presented.

I don’t really enjoy bashing on things, so I’ll halt it there. The book is clearly well intended, and I think there was promise, despite my picking on its simplistic premise – just that that premise either needed to be dolled up more or streamlined without the social / political baggage.