Chuck Dixon (Robin, Detective Comics) and Butch Guice (Ultimate Origins) bring this original, limited series from DC/Wildstorm to shelves this month.  Being a fan of both Dixon and World War II, I was keen to pick this book up and I have to say, even from the cover, I wasn’t dissapointed.

Storming Paradise is a meticulously researched What If…? sort of story that happens in the real world and the premise is quite simple.

What if tests of the atomic bomb had failed and we had to invade Japan?

As someone who spends a lot of time with the history of World War II, this story seemed completely logical, especially knowing how much we actually firebombed Japan during the war.  (We’d bombed so much of the hell out of them before August 1945 that the Atomic Bomb was overkill, especially over a civilian population center).  But to see the Japanese perspective of an imminent landing of American troops was something that Dixon and Guice captured in this comic incredibly well and, by the end, it had left me heart-broken.  You see, they start bringing women and children to the beaches to prepare for the assault…

Granted, this is the first issue and the first issue of any comic with a high concept like this can be deceiving as far as the rest of the series, but this looks like it’s going to shape up to be something people talk about years from now.  It’s a well-written and sobering examination of what may well could have happen if the Manhattan project has (literally) blown up in the face of the scientists and it dissects the brutality of a war perpetrated against a people so badly beaten but with a sense of honor so high that they can’t simply surrender until they’re battered into total submission.

Kurt Vonnegut once said that authors and the books they write about war are all inherently against the idea of war and I don’t think this 6 issue mini-series will be any exception.  Why DC fired Dixon will always be one of the great mysteries of the Universe.

Apparently, Issues #1 and #2 are on stands now…  And I wish I’d have known earlier, because now I need to track down a copy of #2 and get #3 on added to my hold…