This is the first issue of a new limited series from Image. The art lured me in, featuring as it does an arresting combination of vivid colours and science-fiction scenes drawn in a manner that reminds me of Moebius comics. The story begins with a group of futuristic flying vehicles speeding past dinosaurs. Then their commander says "Jump!" and with a "fwop!" they find themselves in a Paris-like city being attacked by giant robots. Narration then reveals that we are in the midst of a time war, in which two sides are attempting to change the past to make the present more congenial. This kind of thing is not uncommon in SF, with Fritz Leiber's Change War series being one of the better-known examples. That emphasised the psychological toll taken on the time war's participants by the changes to reality they were wreaking. The Red Wing seems less cerebral – the protagonists are changing history not by subtle interventions but by flying around in high-tech jet fighters blasting things.
Red Wing has a nice split narrative, following new a pilot starting training with jumps back to his father getting lost in time on a previous mission. But it does not look like it is going to preoccupy itself with the kind of temporal paradoxes that more usually test the mind in time travel stories. At this stage there does not seem to be that much of interest going on in the narrative – if I come back for #2 it will be for the art.
And #2 is now out. I did not come back for it. I wrote the above a few weeks back for the late Martin Skidmore's FA website.
image source
An inuit panda production
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