BATTLE HYMN VOL.1
Written by B. Clay Moore and Drawn by Jeremy Haun
Published by Image Comics

BATTLE HYMN was a book that I ran hot and cold on as it shipped its individual issues. Installment one seemed to be trying too hard to “darken” the classic INVADERS or ALL-STAR SQUADRON concept and lacked interesting characters. By issue three, I’d softened on it, believing that Moore and Haun had done a decent job of carving out their own niche with the archetypical characters. But as issue five concluded, I felt like they had rushed through the story and closed with an unsatisfying ending. So taken together as a whole, how does it read?

Pretty much like the individual issues did: inconsistent, and somewhat frustrating.

Seeing the story collected and reading it in one sitting, the issues with pacing become much more apparent. By the time the end of the series rolls around, you feel a bit like it needed another issue to flesh out the characters and make the tale feel more complete. Characters come and go, and much of the motivation of the background players (i.e. the government types who put the team together) is fuzzy.

The Captain America. The Union Jack. The Namor. The Human Torch. The Whizzer. The types we’re all familiar with are here, and set against the Nazis in the Second World War. But in Moore’s take, they’re mostly sleazy and un-heroic, plus they get their own hooker who sleeps her way through the team. Not quite Roy Thomas, is it? But throw in a conspiracy angled towards an unknown goal and the lack of an obvious reason for the team to be together, and you have genuine intrigue.

Part of the issue is that there’s no real perspective from where the tale is told. Betty, the hooker, is the add-in, but she’s vacant except for her sexuality. The one heroic character, the Mid-Nite Hour (the British hero), is never quite given as much to do as you’d like, rendering him sort of impotent as far as affecting the story. His purpose seems to be mostly observational, which is deliberate as far as the plot goes, but that prevents him from giving the reader the foothold so desperately needed.

If I were looking at BATTLE HYMN from a cynical point of view, I’d question whether or not it was a deconstruction of the archetypal stories from the Silver Age or simply a middle finger extended in their direction. In my final analysis, though, I don’t think that Moore was aiming for cynicism, so much as he was hoping to ground the comics that he loved from his youth. But whether or not he had purity in his purpose, BATTLE HYMN doesn’t quite reach the mark he’s targeting, despite a number of fine elements (including Haun’s art) that get him in the nearby zone. Noble effort, misguided result.

/Mason