Image by Kewei SHANG via Flickr
WARFIX
Written by: David Axe
Drawn by: Steven Olexa
Published by: NBM Comics Lit
Simple. Stunning. Sublime.
A perfect collocation of drawing and writing is indeed a rare jewel, one that shines everlasting in its crown.
WARFIX, written by David Axe and illustrated by Steven Olexa, is just such a jewel.
Not often does the reader get the very best of two distinct worlds—those of words and images. But Axe and Olexa, like Hephaestus of Grecian antiquity, have mined, fashioned, and polished a jewel to stand for all time.
Published in relative obscurity, this is not a book for the masses, though perhaps it should be.
WARFIX, at its core, is a vision quest of sorts. Its protagonist, David—a small journalistic fish that forcefully swims into a very large journalistic ocean (war)—gets exactly what he desires, exactly that thing which he quests for: the indefatigable, ineluctable madness of frontline warfare.
What instantly separates this book from others of its ilk, however, is the internalized struggle David experiences as the story unfolds, as he sinks further and further into the quagmire of seemingly senseless death and destruction both inside and out.
Images that can’t be unseen, either by the reader or by David himself, pervade WARFIX. The horror of actually experiencing war is made manifest by the at times overpowering and at times subversively sinister visual and textual machinations of Axe and Olexa—the narration, and especially Olexa’s renderings, is of the highest quality, and not to be missed.
This is hardly a book for younger, less sophisticated readers—the visuals engulf its victims in waters befouled with the blood of innocents and bestained with the indelible mark of innocence lost. The subject matter is mature, as is the actual delivery.
Be the reader brave or cowardly, he or she WILL get something meaningful, something truly and emotionally devastating from this book.
I give it my absolute highest recommendation.
