Forever War: Marvano : Private Mandella [Paperback]

Joe Haldeman (Author), Bruno Marchand (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The first part of a three-volume adaptation of Haldeman's Nebula Award-winning SF novel presents a gripping tale with disturbing echoes of the Vietnam war, in which Haldeman was wounded. After a colony spacecraft from Earth is mysteriously destroyed, America prepares for the first time to engage extraterrestrial life in combat. William Mandella is one of a small, elite force trained and sent across millions of miles of space to attack an enemy base. The author vividly recreates the tedium, stupidity, terror and destruction of combat. The soldiers' first encounter turns into a bloody massacre of unarmed aliens, an act which leaves Mandella "horrified at the prospect of living with myself for sixty more years," and which sets the stage for the beginning of a war with no end in sight. Marvano and Marchand combine their talents to create a complex technological environment and an alien planet battleground, both represented with distinctive spare line work and a limited but rich palette.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-- Haldeman has created a futuristic allegory of his Vietnam experiences. This vividly illustrated graphic novel, the first installment of a projected series, follows Private Mandella through his training to his first encounter with the enemy on an alien world amid deadly surroundings. Strangers in strange lands, he and his company journey through the galaxy to combat the Taurans, a recently discovered race from a far-off planet. The conflict lasts for 1000 years, fueled by irrational prejudice, hate, and fear.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 50 pages
• Publisher: Nbm Pub Co (December 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0918348951
• ISBN-13: 978-0918348951
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,191,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joe Haldeman has served twice as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and is currently an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful anti-war graphic novel, too bad it seems to be out of print, January 1, 2011

By 

Ryan (Somerville, MA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forever War: Marvano : Private Mandella (Paperback)

The Forever War is the literary counterweight to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, depicting a war with an alien species that's as pointless and horrific as most human wars. As Earth sends its first colony ships into space, one is destroyed by a newly-encountered alien race. Humankind retaliates by creating an elite military force, including the story's protagonist, and sending it to attack the aliens' base. Thus begins an interstellar conflict of attack and counterattack. Haldeman and Marvano present the war in decidedly un-heroic terms, an endless cycle of senseless massacre being waged without clear reason, in which soldiers are little more than disposable cogs in the machine. For every few months the main character spends in space, decades go by on Earth, making the society that sent him to war more and more unrecognizable to him (if this a metaphor for the disconnect that Vietnam-era servicemen like Haldeman felt, it's a pretty effective one). Still, he must face each successive stage in a chilling, unstoppable technological arms race that continues between the two warring species.

Though I haven't yet read Haldeman's original novel, this graphic novelization of it is superb. The bright, simple palette of colors provide an interesting visual contrast to the bleakness of the story. The characters are expressive without being overdone, the backgrounds capture the mechanical sterility of spacecraft and the vast barrenness of planetary surfaces, and the action scenes suitably reflect the confusion of combat. The late 80s look is a bit dated, but not distractingly so. While some characters and scenes seem to have been trimmed down from ones that had greater significance in the original book, nothing feels like it's missing from the story being told. With so many hyped-up, "heroic" graphic novels and comic books on the market that are ostensibly about war, usually created by people who have never seen a weapon used for its true purpose, this is a genuinely affecting anti-war allegory from someone who has.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars classic science fiction, December 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Forever War: Marvano : Private Mandella (Paperback)

Joe Haldeman did it again. His vision and writeing style is a pleasure to read