Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Losers

OK, this one's been out a while, but I love it. Amongst other things it's the first place writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock (his art blog is here) came to my attention. Both are from the UK and have been working for many years for 2000AD and others.

The Losers has the same feel as the movie The Three Kings but better. And the characters share an origin with the A-Team. They were a special forces team who were sent into the middle east and setup. The mysterious Max thought they were dead. He was wrong. Along with their CIA contact, the team go after Max and his entire organization. Who is Max? Max is a code name that has been in use by a CIA operative since the end of World War II. He also runs a multi national conglomeration and illegal black ops.

That's where the Losers come in. They want to bring him down.

The thing I especially like about this series is how they totally threw out everything from the Jack Kirby Series the name is taken from, but managed to keep enough tributes so if you were a fan of the old series, you would get them.

It's also completely different from anything out there at the time. I've, in the last few years, discovered crime comics. Mostly in the pulp family (like Criminal by Brubaker, etc.). The Losers was the book that made me realize that. If you don't enjoy crime comics/novels, you may not enjoy The Losers. If you do enjoy 24, you probably will.

For me, it's definitely a buy. Plus it's complete. You can now read the whole series in 5 trades.

The Losers:



Other books I recommend by Andy Diggle:


Additional work by Jock:

This one could go under Andy Diggle too, but I don't have any other books by Jock to recommend. Especially since I didn't like Faker, but that wasn't due to the art.

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