Review: The Royals – Masters of War #1

We all have seen superheroes or at least people with super powers fighting in World War 2. It’s been done before with Captain America and lots of other characters from the golden age of comics. But imagine  the characters with super powers are also members of royalty. It sounds like an interesting idea if not a little squeaky on how that only royal family members have super powers. But I gave it a shot to see if this was a series to get into.

The comic is about Prince Henry of the house of Windsor and World War 2 which is taking a much more devastating turn now that people with super powers have taking part of the war. It establishes that every royal family in the world has superpowers. But they don’t use to help people so they just sit back and let the war go on. Prince Henry can’t stand seeing his people being attack by Nazi forces everyday so he takes action and joins the fight to defending his people. Unknown to him is that he has broken a international pact that prevents all royals from interfering in wars. So pretty much every country (if not all) with a royal ready to fight for the war. No matter which side a royal family is on.

While this is an interesting idea, this comic doesn’t get you fully into the story. All we see is who are main characters are and what the idea of the story is about. Mind you, this is a first issue and the writer is trying to establish a new universe. The characters that are introduced are loosely based on the House of Windsor. Prince Henry is naive but will tries to do what’s right while the rest of the family are either with him or spiraling downwards in their own personal demons. Which seems cliche when you see one or two characters in this comic like Henry’s brother for example. The only question I have for this comic is that if there was a international pact to not get involved in wars, how come no one (like his dad) told Prince Henry about the pact. It didn’t seem like he knew about it so how come no one told him.

The art here is great. There is a few pages that makes you just look for a few more minutes and say ‘“wow”. But it’s not perfect, as there are times that some of the characters in this comic look the same but have different hair. I know that some might probably say that at least two are family. But that doesn’t change the fact that a spotted at least four characters who had the same build and face but with different hair. I think that brings the comic down a bit despite the fact there a few pages that make you want to see more.

This series will show an interesting take on people with super powers in World War 2. But if it’s like the first issue just showing time skips on just certain parts of World War two it might be hard to connect with these characters. But we’ll see if the creators of the comic can pull this off as this is only a six issue mini-series. So I might give it another issue or two to see if this series is a must read.

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