WRITER: PATT MILLS | ARTIST: CARLOS EZQUERRA | PUBLISHER: REBELLION | FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK | RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 9TH
Third World War was a comic strip that originally appeared in 2000 AD-adjacent magazine Crisis, way back in 1989. Crisis was an attempt at doing politically conscious comic strips aimed firmly at adolescents and older; the sort who were becoming more aware of the state of the world. Third World War: Book One reprints the story from the first fourteen issues of Crisis for the first time in decades.
It’s a tale set in a near-future dystopia where a short-lived World War Three has allowed corporate interests to take over the world. These interests continue to oppress people all over the planet, and the bulk of the story is set in Central America, were we follow 18-year-old Eve who has been conscripted to ‘win hearts and minds’. An attempted suicide finds her assigned to a unit of ‘misfits’, a bunch of broadly British indie stereotypes – an eco-warrior, a fundamentalist Christian, a punk, a football hooligan, and so on. The story deals with military misadventures and murder in Central America, and a commentary on what was going on there at the time.
Third World War: Book One is mostly a thinly-veiled polemic, in which Pat Mills rants about the state of the world through one of the various characters. Sympathetic characters look like they could be found at an anti-war march and less favourable types resemble those commonly found at a Conservative party conference. It’s not very subtle.
The main problem with the book is that it feels very much of its time. Some of the points made are almost quaint given the state of the modern world. Anyone who was a politically left-wing student in the ‘90s will get a big nostalgia hit from this book. Or to put it another way, this is a comic book that features Chumbawumba lyrics. (There is an entire generation who think Chumbawumba were a novelty act, rather than a rather chirpy anarcho-punk band that never took themselves seriously, but we digress.)
Most of the themes are still relevant today of course, but it’s mostly a mix of atomic anxiety, environmental wobbles, and whole info dumps on things that were the ‘big causes’ back in the day. It’s still as important now as it was back then, but the whole thing is delivered in such a blunt way that it feels more like an extended rant rather than an actual story. At least with some of Pat Mills’ other work, the lectures stop for a bit so the protagonists can beat up monsters.
The biggest draw here is the Carlos Ezquerra artwork. It’s gorgeous and lush stuff throughout. They are a few chapters that don’t feature Ezquerra’s work, and they’re almost unreadable, which goes to show how much the art does the heavy lifting for the story.
Overall, this an interesting artefact of its time and solid inspiration for anyone looking to write politically aware stories relevant to the modern-day.
