I was pretty excited to get my hands on Crogan’s March, the second and latest in the “Crogan” series by Chris Schweizer. And lemme tell you why.
Something that I noted when I read the first one was the artwork, a vibrant and almost animated style despite being almost exclusively black and white with some grayscale. I love it, it’s very detailed but not crowded, it’s not hyperrealistic but at the same time not just “cartoony”.
Something that I noticed both reading this and reading Schweizer’s blog is the intense amount of research he does into historical accuracy. It’s pretty amazing how he brings up and highlights little historical things without letting them overcrowd the story itself.
This latest Crogan family member is a French Foreign Legionnaire, fighting in Africa and landing himself in the middle of that philosophical debate over whether the intervention of “superior” nations helps or hurts developing ones. It’s a pretty interesting look at the 19th and early 20th century as well as issues of military occuptation and colonization.
At the same time though, it’s far from an abstract on philosophical debates in comic form. Crogan’s March is definitely not that. It’s still a kick-ass good time of a comic, wrapped up in a package that’s meant for almost any age. While it doesn’t cut back on the realities of a war, it’s by no means a Mark Millar book, which is the balance that I love about Schweizer’s work.
