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Jackboot & Ironheel #3
Released by: IDW Publishing
Released on: October 5th, 2016.
Written and Illustrated by Max Millgate
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Continuing the story from issue #2, this third issue of Jackboot & Ironheel from David 'Max' Millgate and IDW Publishing, finds our hero, former soccer star Eddie Neale, having escaped the Nazi prison inside the creepy old castle with some help from a pair of nuns. Unfortunately for Eddie, or maybe not so unfortunately, he was pulled out of the icy water by a passing boat… manned by German soldiers.
Hans and the other men on the boat march Eddie back to the Kommandant Von-Kleist but he's none too pleased when he finds out that Joachim didn't make it, that he was in fact killed by the rotting corpse of Muggenthaler! Meanwhile, the Kommandant plans Eddie's punishment, he tells his driver, Kurt, that he might execute him at first light. When the soldiers deliver Eddie to him, the Kommandant orders Fritz to put him in solitary confinement until he decides exactly what he's going to do to him and when. The nuns see this happening and Mother Superior tells Sister Evangeline that this all went exactly as planned!
In the Kommandant's chambers, Kurt talks to him about the Muggenthaler issue, wondering aloud if the rumors of his having come back from the dead to haunt the castle as a shambling corpse might actually be true. Kurt explains how he grew up in the area and how there's a legend popular with the locals that tells how the man who built it contracted a man named Wulf to build the perfect bell for his bell tower. Wulf, try as he may, was unable to produce a bell without a crack in it until he partook in an evil pact. This is why there is no hammer in the bell, so that it can never be rung lest it bring that evil back - and yet recently the bell has been heard by some in the castle.
Of course, the Kommandant dismisses all of this as nonsense, until he too gets a visit from Muggenthaler himself, accompanied by a very large Lovecraftian beast!
Millgate's series continues to be a blast to read. Nazi's. Zombies. Nazi zombies. Lovecraftian beasts. Nuns. A smart-mouthed Englishman with some mad footie skills. It's all here, rendered in beautiful color with lots of shadowy atmospherics and detail. This storyline has done a good job of mixing up the humor and the horror in fairly equal doses and that continues with issue three. Millgate's art works great here, though it's interesting to note that during the flashback scene where Kurt tells Von-Kleist the sinister origin of the castle's bell, he changes things up a bit. The regular pages are high contrast, very ink-heavy where the flashback pages are a bit lighter in tone, the penciling is a bit more refined looking and we see a lot of hatching in place of the heavy inks. It's a nice way to make these pages stand out from the rest of the story and a clever device to employ on his part as it grabs your attention pretty effectively.
This issue ends with a doozy of a cliffhanger too - you won't see this coming. We'll definitely be back to see where this goes when issue #4 hits the stands next month. Until then, if you're not hip to this series, get caught up. This is really fun stuff. And how great is that cover?
