Review: Uber, Volume 1
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Rating 4 out of 5 | Grade B+; Nazi Supermen of Dooooom!
It is the year 1945, the allies have all but defeated the Third Reich. Russians are amassed for the final offensive on Berlin itself. Hitler, deep in his bunker, is prepared to join his lover Eva in death. Right at that moment, the tides of history came to be altered.
The Siege of Berlin was broken thanks to an army of superpowered Nazi soldiers, who had single handedly thwarted the Soviet forces, brutally murdering them. The Ubers, Wonderwaffen with physical capabilities exceeding that of normal men, and capable of vaporizing men with a mere glance with superpowered energies had brought the Nazis back from the brink of destruction.
The war, which days before was believed to be all but won, was about to take a long and bloody turn. Elsewhere, a lone British spy, a deep cover agent, must escape from the German heartland and deliver to the allies crucial information regarding the Ubers, without which the war can be considered lost. A new history is in the making, one which would shatter the world beyond what one could imagine. The age of Ubers has arrived.
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Thoughts
Before we start, I have to come clean; I'm more than quite partial to the alternate history genre. Particularly the Nazi world order, subgenre. Ever since the disturbing yet philosophical The Man in the High Castle & Wolfenstein the New Order, I can't get enough of Jetpack Hitler
And if you take the wealth of books, comics, TV Series & Movies made based on this premise (the most reason being Amazon's adaptation of the Philip K Dick book), I'm not the only one who thinks so. This particular premise is a fertile land for writers to till to make new, engaging, often pulpy storylines.
In the last month in particular I have had a field day with such titles. With the likes of The Life Eaters & now Uber. But it is not just the 'Nazis won the world war' premise which interests me. Because anyone who has read history would know that WWII, was not merely fought with men & bullets, but oil & production. Something which the Nazis (& Japanese) had very less of.
Even brilliant tacticians such as Erwin Rommel, the Desert fox, were stymied in N.Africa with fuel shortages blunting the effectiveness of his tank corps. Simply put, the combined resource and Industrial output of the Axis dwarfed those of the Allies. The entire continent of N.America alone could outperform the German factories by leagues.
So, the mere introduction of a superweapon, or super soldier was not enough to turn the tide of the war, in its entirety. It is in this aspect that Uber managed to get my attention.
The Nazi super soldiers, dubbed Panzermensch or 'Tank men' by the allies are beasts in one on one confrontations, capable of killing scores of allied soldiers and going head to head with tanks. But a concerted tactical effort with superior tactics, numbers and firepower such as antitank weapons is enough to bring them down. Or, a precise snipershot into their eyes, while they are charging up their devastating energy bolts, causing a destabilization of energies in their bodies and leading to the so called 'halo effect', causing the tank-men to implode.
In fact, against the allied numerical & technological superiority, the introduction of the Panzermensch is awe inspiring, mostly due to their shock value, as well as the brutality they are capable of bearing down on enemy soldiers. Worse comes to worse, the allies could literally bury them with hundreds of soldiers to exploit their still human weaknesses.
But this is only the case for the standard tank-men. For among the Nazi Ubermensch ranks, there are three individuals, elites even among the super soldiers, whose power dwarves all. These aptly named Battleships are by themselves capable to taking on entire armies and armadas, and come out victorious with barely a scratch. One could say, more than the Panzermensch, it is Battleships who are the major Nazi bulwark against a allied rout.
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One might ask logically, if that is the case, why haven't the Nazis already steamrolled the Allied forces. They do, to a certain extent. But written into the power structure of the the Panzermensch is a fatal weakness, which requires them to take long periods of recuperation, following the use of their powers. Which leaves them, including the Battleships vulnerable for conventional assault. And seeing as how they are a limited and fast dwindling resource, the Nazi high command have to use them sparingly lest they be depleted.
Then there are the Nazis themselves. Super soldiers or not, before the arrival of the Panzermensch, Germany had all bust lost, their enemies already having reached the capital. Just because the super soldiers managed to thwart the final deathblow, doesn't mean they came back to full power. In fact, much of the Nazi Wehrmacht is in tatters, their resources already depleted to dangerous levels. Only the superhuman assist from the Panzermensch is able to hold the whole rotten structure together.
Third is the own eccentricity and inner politics of the Nazi party, led by the ever more paranoid & neurotic Hitler, who, in a completely asinine move (view spoiler). Thus proving that Nazis are their own worst enemies.
This is not helped by the fact that, a scant few days after the arrival of the Panzermensch, a British deep cover spy, managed to steal the research for the Tank-men, smuggling it across allied lines and leading to the creation of allied tank-men. Which means that, for now, the Nazis have the upper hand, in terms of the number of super soldiers & being the first ones to make progress into the research. But the allies, with their considerably larger resource base, not to mention wider pool of scientific minds is soon going to catch up. If the Nazi command does nothing, whatever advantage the Panzermensch, even the Battleships provide will fast be diminished.
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This of course segues into the next interesting aspect of the story. The superhuman arms race. The Nazis have to use their initial stockpile of super soldiers, and their relatively advanced research to keep ahead of the competition. While the allies, through trial and error, have to develop Tank-men & Battleships of their own, while counter navigating the Nazi tactical offensives spearheaded by the Battleships, which are pretty much invincible.
As the story progresses this cat and mouse game promises to be more and more convoluted, and entertaining.
But also some forewarning. This Graphic novel is filled with blood, gore, mutilations, massacres, and macabre human art pieces which can give Pickman's Model a run for it's money. Plus, it shows Nazis, being Nazis.
So those of faint hearts & sensibilities, read at their own risk. If you don't mind all that, I think this series will be quite a ride for you.
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