Twilight X After War by Antarctic Press

By Dan Morrill On February 27, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Comic Books

Twilight X is one of the more interesting anime regular comic book cross overs that simply did not get the attention that it deserved, or the attention that it still deserves. Twilight X takes place 11 years after a devastating nuclear war, with the usual post apocalypse issues that people will face as the Earth degenerates into anarchy and feudalism. Twilight X After War is the story of Jed Saxon, one of the last of the U.S. Special Forces “A-Team”, a gun deal gone bad, and a girl named “Toots” who is head over heels in love with Jed Saxon. The books and comics were originally printed in the early 1990’s and reprinted in the early 2000’s during Antarctic Press’s heyday, but they still stand up well some 8 years after publication (in the case of Twilight X After War). In this series Joseph Wright shows why he is a master craftsman in terms of comic books, from the drawing through a tragic story line, with believable characters and situations.

Overall the tone of the comic books, the trade paperbacks and the pocket manga’s is the eventual rise of hope that in the end people will overcome some of the most desperate situations and still find love, hope, and a reason to carry on. Even the Jed begins to question why is a solder after 11 years of war, with Japan, Europe and Israel a smoking radioactive ruin, Toots grounds him, even when he is doing very stupid things like running guns and finding that he is the proud owner of the nuclear command codes that will launch the remaining missiles against what targets are left. The general feeling of lawlessness in effect drags the reader into the comic book story line and simply does not let them go. As Jed falls into deeper traps it is only his special forces training that at times keeps him and Toots alive. The attention to military detail is exceptionally well done, leaving one turning each page in suspense of what will happen next. Overall this is one of the better post-apocalyptic non-zombie series of comic book series out there. While it is dated in some respects, after all it originally was printed in 1990 and 1991, overall some 20 years later it still holds up well, and is brilliantly executed.

While Antarctic Press availability has declined in some ways over the years, becoming harder and harder to find anywhere including online, some of their older titles are worth finding and reading. Generally they are available on Amazon and EBay for very large markups but at times you can find a very good deal with their titles on the Antarctic Press web site. Worth finding and reading, Twilight X is absolutely worth picking up and reading. It would be very good to see if it would be worthwhile to rerelease some of these earlier anime/comic book style cross overs to a whole new audience. Given the length of time these have been off market it would be very cool to introduce these comics to a whole new generation of readers.