Thought Train to Pusan

It’s been almost a year (if not more) since I read the first volume in the Peter Panzerfaust series, which I absolutely adored! And so I had forgotten a few details about what actually happened in the previous installment. But once I got into it, I remembered quickly, and thoroughly enjoyed this second volume entitled “Hook”. This volume includes issues #6-10 of the comic series, and picks up with one of the French orphans, Julien, at an older age; here, Julien recounts the tales of his group of brothers in war led by Peter, as they try to find and rescue their lost friend, Felix. Along the way, the group meets up with a French resistance, and joins forces with them. One of these French members is a young woman named Tiger Lily, who is tough as nails and Julien soon falls for. We also once again meet Kapitan Haken, whose encounter with Peter is very intriguing due to that which it seems to reveal, but also leave hidden about who Peter truly is. All in all, this volume conti...

The simplest way to describe the comic series of Peter Panzerfaust would be as a mid-teens Peter Pan, fighting through World War II Europe with a group of French orphans. It’s the kind of thing that makes some people turn away as it seems ridiculous, while others are intrigued by how it could work, putting this classic figure of Peter Pan into a completely different and historically real universe. And does it work? I think it does, extremely well: Peter Panzerfaust takes the iconic image of the boy who never wants to grow up and turns his mythology on its head to become something else entirely. It’s not about not wanting to grow up, but about keeping a youthful spirit in a situation where you are forced to grow up before you are really even an adult. The first volume of Peter Panzerfaust (there are only two trade volumes as of now), entitled The Great Escape deals with how a group of young French orphans first meet up with the vivacious figure of Peter. The story is told fro...