How to describe Children of the Grave? Waltz and Maloney tackle a thorny topic (ethnic cleansing), but they do so using made-up countries and a team of special ops who are closer to the school of G.I. Joe than Blackhawk Down. It's a genre blend that probably shouldn't work, and at times it does come across as a little too cartoony black and white in its morality, but I find that I like these three characters and I find the horror-tinged mystery at the center of the book intriguing. The creators give in to a number of early creator mistakes, notably too much dialogue/narration and some cluttered artwork, but their obvious talent shines through, and they should definitely get credit for pulling off such a strange genre mix as well as they do.
In the time-honored tradition of military fiction, the protagonists of Children of the Grave are an elite, small unit of trained professional soldiers. Waltz does a good job of crafting LT, Lil Pete and Shiv (nicknames, not codenames) and steering just the right side of cliches, and the camaraderie between the soldiers is one of the best aspects of the book. It's easy to believe these guys as friends and allies who have seen some pretty rough situations together, and who can joke with one another and support one another at the same time. Waltz has served in the military, and that knowledge serves him well in writing the relationships between the three lead soldiers.
However, while the soldiers ring true to life, the rest of the story feels a little too simplistic, too much like the easy answers, black and white morality found in superhero comics. Nobody wants to think much about the guys like Milosevic, what drove them to do what they do, but Waltz really needed to put more thought into the personality of fictional "Stilwanese" Colonel Assan. The scenes between Assan and his captain present them as somewhat uninteresting, one-dimensional monsters without conscience, and it doesn't ring true. Rather than coming across as someone doing something horrific in the name of twisted logic or religious fervor, Assan comes across as a Snidely Whiplash type, and it hurts the story, which revolves around the lead characters assassinating this villain. It gives the heroes a moral certainty, which also seems less interesting than the compromise that must take place in all warfare.
Maloney's artwork is good, and shows a lot of potential. His storytelling is strong, he doesn't skimp at all on the backgrounds, and he can get mood across pretty effectively sometimes with the ghostly children or haunting dreams. The largest problem I see is that he's not quite there in terms of using white or empty space, and so the layouts tend to feel a bit crowded. Never so crowded that storytelling is impaired, but a few more beat panels and maybe even laying off on some of those detailed backgrounds when they're not important to the story would probably help the storytelling even more. Of course, part of the fault does lie with Waltz, who packs a lot of dialogue and narration into this comic, and who would probably do well to tighten it up quite a bit and let the art do some of the talking, as it's clearly capable of doing so.
Children of the Grave is first and foremost a tale of military specialists on a mission, at least in this first issue, but there are hints of more in the story. Each member of the squad, not to mention Colonel Assan, is haunted by dreams that tie into their past but which clearly tie into what's going on with the children missing from the mass graves. Waltz and Maloney leaves the story deliberately unclear in this first issue, but he does succeed in getting across the somewhat creepy mood of these ghostly children, especially with that last page. 6/10
