FUBAR: Mother Russia

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

In December 1921, Frederick R. Barnard published an article commending the effectiveness of graphics in advertising with the title "One look is worth a thousand words". Over the last nearly 100 years, we have seen this statement prove itself true time and time again. Just think of silent movies or the emotions that print ads attempt to bring to the surface. I would call anyone a liar if they said that the ASPCA commercial that shows abused animals with Sarah McLachlan singing in the background did not bring a tear to their eyes. “In the Arms of an Angel…..” I can picture it in my mind now and unfortunately I’m being affected by allergies at the same time. Damn those allergies and that sad, sad, look in that dogs face…. Sure we are all guys and tried to hold it back, but the emotion still wanted to be there before we had to kill it.

This philosophy of using pictures to represent words is most present in the comic book medium. In comic books, the artists spend countless hours portraying a story or scene outlined to them by a writer. Now in most cases we hope that there is a good pairing of Artist to Writer because an artist cannot do the impossible. How can an artist portray a character running into an invisible wall without the writer first letting the readers know that there is an invisible wall there? Nearly impossible. But there have been situations where this has worked. Who can forget when Marvel Comics published G.I. Joe #21 in March 1984. This was the highly impactful all silent Snake Eyes issue. Josh Blaylock and Mike Zeck made for a perfect combination of writer/artist to relay a scene without a single word getting uttered or with the absence of narrative boxes to tell the reader what was going on. Since then, there have been many more examples of this. Take John Byrne on Critical Error or Ricardo Delgado on Age of Reptiles (the former coming back to the world of comics after more than 25 years since it was first published in 93). If you are of the younger generations, maybe you remember Owly. A book specifically targeted at children with little to no reading skills. This was a great way to get my kids into comics without having to need to read. So the idea of illustrating a thought is nothing new.

So why am I talking about this anyways? Obviously this is an independent comic book review site, but I had you read 405 words (thank you Microsoft Word counter) about the history of silent books. So I should get on with the review already. This past Wednesday, FUBAR Press published the first issue of three from the title, Mother Russia. Now I’m not saying that this book is silent by any means, but I will get to that in a minute.

For those of you that are not familiar with FUBAR, let me give you the reader’s digest version of its background. FUBAR started as a World War II Zombie anthology featuring 13 stories from an army of small press creators. This Nazi-Zombie book has just continued and continued to deliver solid stories and comics. Jeff McComsey is the father of this storyline where he has acted as both the writer and illustrator. Besides his duties as a creator, Jeff is also editor in chief of this New York Times Best Selling historical zombie anthology. This newest storyline, Mother Russia, had very meager beginnings as a Kickstarter project back in 2013. As Kickstarter projects go, this one was very successful. The statistics according to KS tell the story of how well received this book has been. According to KS, “1,890 backers pledged $95,908 to help bring this project to life”. When Jeff started this project, the original thought was that he needed $3,500 to bring this short story to print. Jeff achieve this goal by 2,704%. I wonder if there was any expectation by FUBAR fans that this book is expected to be any good.

Now bring us to the present day. On April 29th, 2015, FUBAR: Mother Russia finally hits the shelves of your local comic book store. Being a fan of everything Indie, FUBAR has always been on my pull list. I’ve read all the Anthologies, one-shots and FCBD issues that have been published. In fact, I was very happy to get my 2014 FCBD issue signed by one of the creators last year at the Boston Comic Con. Being that this is a three issue Mini-series, I’ve been very curious about this story to see if the creators over at FUBAR Press would be adding to this short story at all. One of the things that I’m loving about this issue is that it is in the normal comic book size format. While I’ve liked the larger magazine type issues, storing those type of comics is a real pain between my two back pockets if you know what I mean. Most stores don’t even carry bags and boards for magazine sized issues, so now I have to do special orders and have a bunch of stock sitting around that just ends up in the way. So seeing Mother Russia in a standard size was like a warm cup of coffee in the morning. Just the way the world has meant everything to be. A deep sigh of relief.

As I open up Mother Russia, the first things that hits me is just how amazing the art is. This isn’t super detailed like a David Finch type book nor is it super stylish like a Ben Templesmith book. It is a black and white book that conveys the perfect message in every single panel. No panel is wasted and provides all the details that are needed to capture the story. This comes back to my earlier conversation about relaying a story without words. The heroine of the storyline is completely alone. She is a sniper facing a world overrun by Nazi Zombies. In the quiet world of a sniper, how many words are needed? In reality, none. And that is exactly what Jeff brings us in the beginning of the book; silence. Does that make it boring or hard to get through? Not at all. In fact, I think that Jeff told us more about this character and the story of her life without a single word spoken. The impact that this brings us is truly amazing. Once another person (non-zombie) is introduced, this is when there is more dialogue, but it is also needed. So this is not another ripe off of G.I. Joe 21, but at the same time it didn’t need to be to bring the exact same type of impact. I think one of the reasons why this lack of narrative works so well with this book would happen to be the fact that Jeff played the role of artist and writer on this initial story. When you are playing both parts you do not get lost trying to figure out what the other was really thinking when the panel was developed.

I would have been completely satisfied and ok with this first issue of Mother Russia as a stand alone issue, but FUBAR Press did not stop there. Included in this book was a back-up story called “The Sniper”. This back-up story was again written by Jeff McComsey, but the artwork was provided to us by Steve Willhite.

Steve’s been a freelance cartoonist since ’91 with artwork appearing in comic books, magazines, children’s books and newspapers. His work has been published by Alterna Comics, Caliber Press, Antarctic Press, Aiiie! Comics and various others. His most recent work is seen in FUBAR and he is doing an exceptional job there. Scene-to-scene, Steve brings the images to life and finds the right balance of cartoonish and detailed to make it work. In the minds of us over at ICBR, Steve is the perfect fit for FUBAR and we are a bit amazed that he hasn’t been picked up by either of the big two yet. It’s only a matter of time.

While this book really didn’t hit my radar as my must read for the week and it didn’t make ICBR’s Golden Thumbs-up award for the week, this might have been a huge oversight on our part. This book contains everything that you’d want from a first issue. The writing and the art is amazing. There is a bunch of action scenes to keep you entertained. There are zombies and Nazi’s. And finally you get not just one but two stories for your dollars’ worth. What is the drawback of this comic? You will have to wait 30 days for the next issues. Total Bummer!!!! But while you are waiting for the next issue, why don’t you go back and pick up some back issues of FUBAR. You don’t need to read them to understand what is going on in Mother Russia, but like MR, you will get the opportunity to get a few great stories. We cannot recommend that you start reading FUBAR any more without sounding like we belong on their Marketing Department. In fact, maybe we do??????