Savage Squad 6 #1 // Review
Intel said that the enemy squad wouldn’t drop until morning. (That’s what Squad Leader Holland says, anyway.) Cavalry Scout Badger doesn’t think it’s a squad, though. It’s something else. The squad leader is persistent, though. Can’t run the risk of getting beat to the payload. Then, Hoops blows up in a bloody mess, and all bets are off. Welcome to Northern Ukraine in 2037. Welcome to the first issue of Savage Squad 6. The writing team of Robert Venditti and Brockton McKinney open a surprisingly promising new dystopian military series for Dark Horse with artist Dalts Dalton and colorist Geraldo Filho.
Badger was right. Doesn’t make him any less dead, though. (Holland’s squad didn’t fare too well against the threat.) In the aftermath of a new world war, society has all but vanished. A few are left...hunted by a brutal army known as the Scourge. All men of fighting age are dead. The Scourge think the people of the central colonies are no longer a threat. They’re wrong. There are at least six people crazy enough to take on the Scourge. They are the women of the Savage Unit. They’re legends...but they’re legends working with a brand new medic, and they’re entering a red zone in northern Ukraine inhabited by a threat tough enough to ravage an entire squad in less than five pages.
The Dirty Dozen. The Seven Samurai. The...well...ragtag group of badass military personnel is kind of a cliche. Venditti and McKinney pound the story into the page with a clever poetry that hits with the right kind of gravity. There’s definite narrative momentum as the series ramps up and marches out into a still-irradiated Chernobyl hot zone. The personalities of the Six aren’t exactly anything other than cliche, but there’s a sly charm about them that feels cocky enough that it doesn’t seem to care WHAT the reader thinks. There’s a fun kind of energy in that.
Dalton and Filho scramble the story across the page with a crazy sketchiness. The swagger of the Savages is right at home with art that scratches out its own kind of brutality with sharp angles and quick, sudden movements. Though each of the Six has a distinct personality, they all address the page with roughly the same look of determination. Nat’s the new medic...she’s the one who isn’t totally battle-hardened, so there’s a tendency for the reader to see the world of the series through her eyes. This makes for a nice little bit of dramatic contrast.
The series is off and running in a positive direction. The Savages seem pretty cool. And it IS fun to hang out with them for at least one issue. Venditti and McKinney move things across the page with a stylish sense of fun that might continue to find an appeal in the issues to come if they can continue to track the right kind of poetry and march it across the page at the right angles.
