Red5 Comics 2021
Created & Written by Preston Poulter
Pencilled by Lovalle Davis
Inked by Walden Wong & Diana Greenhalgh
Coloured by Alonso Espinoza
Lettered by Taylor Esposito
Shot down in Stalingrad
Katya and Lilya engage the enemy in a massive dogfight over the city of Stalingrad. Lilya is shot down and has to parachute into the enemy city.
There is a part of me that really identifies with this book and that’s because my family fled Europe during WWII to escape the Nazi oppression and for those that didn’t make it out I’d like to think they took arms up against them and help fight back the German menace like Lilya is doing here. The women in my family have always been strong, stronger than the men if I’m being brutally honest, so it is nice to think that I have some sort of connection to what we see in these pages. Regardless, this is how I am engaged in this story and for you it may be quite different but you will become engaged in this story because what Preston is doing is really rather remarkable with the writing.
I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. The character development is sensational and all it takes are a few moments here and there to showcase someone’s character, Captain Kazarinova for example. How we see the dialogue, character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter continue to flesh them out more and more fully. The pacing here is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story as well as the twists & turns really helps to draw us in further and further.
I greatly appreciate how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, strengthen, evolve and emerge. It is these little threads that make up the larger picture and add some delightful moments to balance out the more serious ones. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is so well achieved.
I love the interiors here and the loss of Lovalle dims this world brightness. The linework we see is extraordinary and how the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level and quality of detail work is truly astounding. How we see backgrounds being utilised does this mans heart good and whether it’s wood panelling, brick on the buildings or the maps on the walls what we see is so detailed and so impactful that you almost take it for granted. How they work within the composition of the panels to bring us depth perception, that sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book is marvellous. This is not a digital friendly book because the fight scenes in the skies flip the page and you really get to see such creativity and imagination on display with how the sky, the bullets and the planes appear. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show such a masterful eye for storytelling. The colour work is simply stunning. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows this absolutely stellar eye for colour and how to utilise it most effectively.
This really is a gorgeous book in how we see it written and illustrated. The love triangle that isn’t with Katya and her longing for Lilya who has been with Alexei while makes for an interesting idea I do like that it hasn’t interfered with the story at all. The writing, characterisation and the overall storytelling is so intelligently written and the interiors are just mind numbingly good.