The easiest way to describe The Light Brigade is to say that it's like Band of Brothers if you mixed in angels with all the Nazis. Tomasi has come up with a high concept that mixes supernatural quest elements into the tried-and-true war story, and the resulting mixture is a treat to read. Tomasi spends a fair amount of time in this issue building up the American forces who will become the titular Light Brigade, and the verisimilitude that comes from the World War II battlefields helps considerably in grounding the book and making it interesting long before the supernatural elements that show up. Peter Snejbjerg handles the artwork chores, and provides some of the best artwork he's done in his career. A promising start for an intriguing miniseries.
One of the things I love about a good war story is a well-built squad. Whether it's the colonial marines of Aliens, the ever-popular "ragtag band" of Dirty Dozen or Three Kings or the well-oiled machine of Easy Company or Saving Private Ryan, good group dynamics are essential to making a war story work for me. Tomasi starts off well in that regard, showing the injustices that visited the troops in World War II as their home lives went on without them, even as they fought so that they would have home lives to go back to. I was reminded in all the right ways of Band of Brothers, as Tomasi shows the more grueling aspects of serving in World War II and the camaraderie that developed among the men as a result. Tomasi does great character work and fantastic dialogue, whether it's the salty talk of soldiers at war or the more elaborate and poetic speech of angels.
Like Band of Brothers, I sometimes got a little lost as to who was who. There are definitely characteristics defining each character, whether it's Simon's endearing fondness for the JSA or the variety of moments that we see early on, but I haven't put faces to all of the names yet. Fortunately, Tomasi has fleshed out one main character whose test of faith seems to be the linchpin on which the human element of the story will turn. I have no doubt that with the smaller group, I'll start to learn more about who everyone is as the story goes on, but it's almost not important, because I do know who Stavros is, what caused him to lose his faith and why that's important to the mission that he and the men have been saddled with.
It is this mission that really sets The Light Brigade apart from being just another war story. Tomasi and Snejbjerg open the tale with men waiting in a desolate part of Europe for something to happen, playing with a mixture of boredom and tension, and then they spring the weirdness on us. Not just a large party of Germans, but a surprisingly wicked force amongst them, and a truly shocking and bloody event that serves notice to the men and to the reader that more is going on here than a simple Earthly war. Tomasi does a nice job showing the somewhat incredulous reaction of these grunts to the supernatural aspects of the story, but he doesn't belabor the point either. As Jesse so succinctly puts it at the end: "Hey, an angel smashes up next to me and puts all this crap in my head -- damn right I'm going."
Snejbjerg and colorist Bjarne Hansen are key to making this transition believable. The art team opens with a very realistic, very detailed look at a snow-covered position in Belgium, and they do an exceptional job in portraying the bloody, fast and confusing nature of battle when the Nazis first confront our protagonists. However, it is when the supernatural elements enter the picture that we really see what the art team brings to the book, because the haunting, unearthly look of the "Nazi" commander and his loyal troops is truly creepy, the angels truly powerful and awe-inspiring, and the result is that it's easy to see why these salt of the Earth type guys might buy into something of such a divine and magical nature.
