Posted on: February 15th, 2012 REVIEW: Peter Panzerfaust #1
Peter Pan Syndrome. I haz it. Okay, I don’t actually know if you can have it when you’re female-but you get my point. I am also affected in that I love me some Peter Pan. You name it: Disney, Mary Martin, Robin Williams-I’ve seen it and loved it. So with the advent of the first ever Image Expo coming up next week, let’s talk about the latest incarnation of our puer aeternus: Kurtis Wiebe and Tyler Jenkins’ Peter Panzerfaust.
You have the adventurous boy that doesn’t grow up, but what if you threw him into a situation that has robbed millions of children of their childhoods? War. And maybe the Lost Boys aren’t just a rag-tag group of roughians; they’re actually orphans in France during the German attacks in the 1930s. That sounds like a perfectly reasonable situation for a Peter Pan story, right? Right? NO! But it’s awesome that someone thought it was.
Recount Peter’s tales through ‘Tootles’, everybody’s favorite Lost Boy* who has since grown up. Now. How amazing does this sound? Pretty damn amazing. Read it and it’s like Wiebe and Jenkins are telling you a Peter Pan story in code. No, we’re not going to have a fairy running around, we’re just going to call her “Belle”. No, we aren’t going to make Peter actually fly, but we are going to give him a gun and that should count for something. But buck up, you get little Easter Egg references throughout the book and when you see him crow, you’re going to get goosebumps.
Well, you’ll get goosebumps when you see him [period] This character redesign is fantastic! We traded in the leafy green get-up for a trench coat and combat boots. Yes! Plus, as of right now at least, all the colors of the book are much more subtle and muted than in most Pan accounts. Honestly with all the destruction and despair of war, there really isn’t any other way to do it. That’s what I like most about this first issue of Peter Panzerfaust: it’s a war story. There are actual horrors in the panels. Children died in this first issue, bombs are going off and the orphans are getting shot at. It’s not a bright and shiny story.
When you break down the Peter Pan lore, it’s pretty dark. With pirates and Indians, hands getting cut off, kidnapping, crocodile attacks, forgotten orphans, anarchy-it all sort of gets glossed over. This take is just throwing in another dark element. And maybe that’s when the world needs Neverland and Peter Pan the most; it’s when things are at their darkest that escapism can prove to be helpful.
This is a refreshing take on one of my favorite stories. I’m incredibly excited to continue reading to see how Wiebe and Jenkins tie-in the characters we are all so familiar with.
*Technically, everyone’s favorite Lost Boy SHOULD be Rufio. But…we won’t bother getting into Hook right now. Bangarang.