Customer Reviews

Storming Paradise

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It's one of history's greatest what if questions. What if the atomic bomb test went wrong? What if President Truman has no choice but to order an invasion of Japan?

Chuck Dixon and Butch Guice tackle this question in the graphic novel Storming Paradise. The story is told in a series of vignettes focusing on different characters. We meet an Irish priest working in Nagasaki, a squad of American GIs and their Japanese-American translator and a young Japanese boy sent to battle the gaijin invaders.

This is very much a ground-level view of the war, we check in on the commanders and Emperor Hirohito from time-to-time but most of the time we're following ordinary soldiers and civilians with some interesting historical cameos. The fighting is dirty and brutal with Japanese civilians launching suicide attacks. Parallels with Iraq or Afghanistan are hard to escape.

GIs respond with equal brutality shooting prisoners and killing civilians in error. There is no 'greatest generation' romanticism here. The Americans are racist, just as biased towards their Japanese colleague as towards their enemies and they just want to go home.

Guice's art is perfect for the subject, his style is similar to Joe Kubert's Sgt Rock comics. The troops are dirty and tired, there are no larger-than-life heroes here.

There are some minor problems if you have a strong background in the history of the Pacific War. Dixon casts Hirohito as the main villain, bleeding Japan dry to force a negotiated peace when historically Hirohito cast the decisive vote to surrender. Early in 1946 Truman turns to the Soviets for help, but historically they had already declared war on Japan in August of 1945, capturing several islands in the north before the surrender. The greater war in China and Korea is completely ignored. People with little background may be frustrated by the lack of a good map or by dialogue in Japanese or German.

And finally the book ends abruptly, long before the war ends. Hopefully there's a sequel coming soon.

This is just a great alternate history comic. It pulls no punches and realistic. Great stuff.