by Allegionary (OXCGN’s Teenage Gamer)
© 2009 Alex Hilton
VICTORY!
(Editor: Sometimes we are taken with a product that isn’t entirely gaming related, though Weta certainly have been involved with the Halo universe (building a real-life Warthog for the movie currently in limbo). This Victory graphic novel/ artbook is part of their unique collection of products they produce and sell and we gave our youngest member the opportunity to review it. Here’s what he had to say.)
“Greetings. Young Men and Women of Earth. Welcome to the latest instalment of Victory- a guide to understanding our Solar System and your place in it.”
So begins the graphic novel and artbook Dr Grordbort presents Victory: Scientific Adventure Violence For Young Men & Literate Women. Greg Broadmore wrote and illustrated Victory for Weta which is a company based in New Zealand that builds props like the real life Halo Warthog as well as Master Chief’s Mark VI Spartan Helmet and produces visual effects for movies like Avatar, Lord of the Rings and District 9. It and the earlier Dr Grordbort books are published by Dark Horse Books.
Victory is a high collector quality book because it has thick glossy pages that are easy to grip, a smooth hard cover and the quality of the graphic art is astounding. Victory is a tough book that can withstand bumps and bruises, though true collectors will want to take care of it.
collector quality book
Broadmore sets his work up to resemble a 20th Century science fiction book for ‘young men and literate women’ with a hint of 21st Century science fiction in some of his space creatures. He uses a style that reminds us of the past’s version of the future while also making it interesting and comical.
The 20th Century was the age of quickly changing new industrial technology and the science fiction of the time represented that.
Science fiction of the early to mid 20th Century was often industrial in style. People were looking toward the future and into space because technology had given humankind control over their environment. The buildings’ shape were straight lines, were made of shiny brass, iron and glass and were slick and streamlined to suggest movement into the future. Other planets tended to seem lifeless compared with Earth.
Broadmore transports us into an imaginative and fun world that is very different from today’s real high tech world.
• Venus Is Doomed – Dr Grordbort On Venus
The 21st Century element is his vision of some of the aliens which are not all two-legged creatures like early-to-mid 20th Century people viewed aliens to be.
Victory consists of hilarious posters, art info pages and comic strips. Some of the posters are recruiting posters that are trying to recruit people into the British Colonial Expeditionary Forces which are the main alien-fighting force. Victory also contains information about the British Colonial Expeditionary Forces’ tanks such as the Remorseless, a 450 tonne landship that towers over the battlefield.
Some of the information in Victory is about the aliens of Venus. From the googly-eyed Venusipithecus Robustus to the best dressed animal on
They make models from the book too
Venus, the Husky-Throated Gripe, there is enough information to think that the animals were real creatures.
There is also information about the various ray-guns used by the British Colonial Expeditionary Forces. Many of the ray-guns are made by Dr Grordbort, the leading designer of ray-guns but some are made by individual companies.
The ray-guns use the 20th Century idea of everything being powered by atoms. The Pomson 6000 is a sub-atomic wave gun that can apparently dissolve an Egyptian pyramid in four archaeological weeks. It is worth reading about the interesting uses of the ray-guns and their retro-style is cool.
The two comic strips are about Lord Cockswain, an explorer in the British Colonial Expeditionary Forces that looks like he is about to go on an African safari with his wide bushy moustache and large elephant-gun styled ray-gun.
Lord Cockswain’s first adventure takes him through the perils of Venus fighting various aliens as he manages to either kill or get every single member of his expedition force killed. He still ends the story with an “As you were” to his now non-existent expedition force.
Lord Cockswain’s second adventure takes him to our very own moon. Firstly he finds himself a guide to lead him to a moon-men base where there is a hidden stock of missiles. Lord Cockswain goes through the base killing moon-men, sabotaging the base and he grabbing some “important looking papers with lots of squiggly lines and long words all over them”.
He finishes the mission and arrives home in time for buttered scones. Lord Cockswain had had some very interesting expeditions and great one-liners like “it’s as cold as a Scotsman’s bollocks up here”. He reminds me of that arrogant bushy mustached guy in Blackadder with the giant codpiece always shouting “Hwaaaa!”.
Retro Sci Fi Rules
Victory also contains material that shows how racist the British colonialism (or here ‘space colonialism’) was to aliens. There are posters showing what might happen to Earth if aliens attacked it. The posters play on people’s fear of invasion to put into their minds that aliens were all evil.
One says, for example: “Most [Martians] are known baby eaters, don’t you know?” much like World War 1 posters showed Germans to be evil, though they are clearly making fun of these with other comments like: “This vivid image is simply a drunken artists representation of what it might look like should [invasion] occur. And golly, isn’t it terrifying?”
Colonial racism is also shown when Lord Cockswain spots an alien and immediately calls it a vile name, like “mouldy frog”.
Lord Cockswain also showed how he was racist when, in the second comic strip, he sees a group of aliens and he shoots them all before his guide could tell him that they were herbivores and therefore harmless. The British Colonial Expeditionary Forces were very racist and it is shown in Victory with humour.
Broadmore is a great artist and Victory is proof of this. The graphic art is high quality and the detail is better than most, if not all, graphic novels I’ve read. The backgrounds are realistic because they fade off into the distance and are not just some group of lines or colours.
• Dr Grordbort’s Infomous ray Gun Info-mercial.
I borrowed a Star Wars graphic novel from my local library and found, when compared to Vicory’s comic strips, that Broadmore’s art was far superior and not quick-drawn like the one I borrowed. He clearly pays attention to every detail as shown by his art-info pages.
The colours used in the art suggest really well what the location was. For example in the first comic strip Broadmore uses different types of oranges to represent a dusty, dirty planet.
Broadmore also uses light really realistically. If a light was on in only one part of a room only that part would be lit up in the art.
Broadmore’s art makes the action leap out of the page and without that the book would not be as good as it is. Broadmore has shown how good he is at graphic art with Victory. His use of old-style clothing, weapons, rocket ships, techno machines, and space helmets is very different to much of today’s sci fi.
Lord Cockswain leads the readers through the perils of Venus and the mountain ranges of the moon in two amazing adventures. The extra material makes Broadmore’s world seem real and shows the reader the huge Victory universe.
Victory is a book that I recommend to anyone who loves science fiction graphic novels or artbooks but want a comedy spin on it. It also has its own spin on the classic 20th Century science fiction which makes it a unique book.
Overall I loved Victory because of the comedy, the quality of the graphic art, the quality of the book itself and because of the way Broadmore makes Victory’s world seem real.
To be honest I did not have a clue what I was looking at when I first saw Victory but after talking with my father who watched the older science fiction TV serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers when he was young and after researching a bit on old sci fi stories and the British colonial period, I understood the approach the book had to science fiction.
It is a tribute to past science fiction with a smirk.
WETA SHOP: HERE.
© 2009 Alex Hilton
Filed under: Collectables, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Dark Horse Books, Dr. Grordbort, Greg Broadmore, Sci Fi, Science Fiction, Victory, Weta, Weta New Zealand, WETA Studios, Weta Workshops
