Escape #9
Written by Rick Remender
Art and Colors by Daniel Acuna
Letters by Rus Wooten
For a book that’s solidly atop my comic book of the year rankings already, I’m never shocked by the high quality of each issue anymore. If you asked me today, I’d say that Remender and Acuna’s Escape will come to be known as one of the best war comics of all time, not just because of the incredible story and art but because of the perspectives it provides on the true horrors of war. Issue #9, or as it’s actually called, Chapter 9: The Kindness of Strangers, delivered on every level. Let’s get into it. Spoiler Warning Now In Effect for Escape - Chapter 9: The Kindness of Strangers.
“Kindness is Remarkably Easy to Accept When One is Starving.”
In the opening pages of Chapter 9, a soldier rockets toward the Earth after escaping a doomed plane with the rest of his squadmates still on board. Yes, this is the very first scene from Chapter 1, but it's shown from a completely different perspective and for the first half of this issue, we don’t see Milton at all, but we do get to meet his squadmate, another anthropomorphic person named Flynn, who looks quite like the same people he’s fighting against.
Flynn is a very different character than Milton, and over the course of the issue’s first half he gets himself involved in a very precarious situation. Flynn crash lands down in a small town outside the city limits and finds a place that seems untouched by the war going on just miles away. There are houses and picket fences and an overwhelming sense of peace despite being close to a place where death and depression have strangled an entire population… Nevertheless, Flynn is careful as he moves through the neighborhood and encounters a Narenian couple collecting their food for the day.
The theme that snakes its way through this entire issue is perspective, and this instance of Flynn meeting the Narenian couple kicks that theme off in spades. Escape has done a great job shedding light on the actual horrors of war and the atrocities committed in the name of “following orders,” but we have so far only seen Milton’s experience and heard Milton’s thoughts on things. As the issue continues, we see that Milton and Flynn aren’t just physically different from each other, but the way they think and how they process traumatic events couldn’t be further apart. Remender choosing to make Flynn the star for the first half of this issue was a gamble; I really did miss my guy Milton, but the decision pays off as the issue trucks on.
The Narenian couple takes Flynn in, even with him wearing an enemy uniform, and by sundown he’s sitting at their dining table with a piece of bread being torn off as he eats his first real food all day. Flynn feels a sense of safety that he hasn’t felt since being with his squad and even believes that this is a mark of “civility returning” towards the end of a war that will hopefully reach its conclusion sooner rather than later. These kind people and their daughter have seen beyond the uniform he wears and just want to help a hurt person get back on their feet. It’s an act of kindness that we haven’t seen much, but one that echoes Milton’s first meeting with the Narenian father Anders and his son Emil. Unfortunately, this is where the comparisons start because this family feels very different about Flynn than Anders did about Milton…
From a scene that started with so much promise, violence and heartbreak are unfortunately not far behind. Flynn begins to notice as he eats that something doesn’t feel right. The way the mother is shakily putting a lantern in their window… the way the daughter is smiling just a little too hard… the way the father can’t seem to stop staring at him a little too closely… the ruse is up as quickly as Flynn ate that bread as Narenian soldiers burst in, and the scenario that felt too good to be true actually is.
Whereas Milton was trusted by the civilians he ran into, Flynn is not granted that same luck. When the soldiers burst through the door, Flynn uses the mother as a human shield against a hail of machine-gun fire, murders a soldier with a wild firing of his pistol, and shoots the father right through the head. The daughter hits him in the arm, but he’s quick to shoot her right back; his bullet finds the inside of her head. Flynn escapes the home and hides in the sewers to escape his would-be captors.
Milton and Flynn’s interactions with the Narenian civilians go in completely different directions. Without the assistance of Anders and his son Emil, Milton never makes it to the military base to destroy the Titan Cannon and never completes his main goal. Milton was shown the best of the Narenian people and shown that not all of them are bloodthirsty would-be despots. Milton was shown that even some Narenians can look past an enemy uniform to see the person underneath. Flynn was not granted this same courtesy. He is immediately seen as an enemy; he isn’t afforded the chance to be seen for the man under the uniform. The Narerian family can only see his uniform and not past it; they can only see the pain that uniform has brought their people. Flynn never had a chance. Both men's interactions shape their outlook on the war and are huge inflection points. Milton’s showed him a brighter day. Flynn’s showed him a darker night.
Flynn’s inner voice during this scene in the house with the family reflects his current mindset really well. Remender has proven to be a master of getting readers to understand his characters through their inner voice and some deeply personal monologues. The entire time Flynn is essentially murdering this family, he keeps saying to himself that this was all necessary, that they made him do this, that he had no other choice. It’s a moment that we never got to see Milton experience, but again, this theme of perspective continues to permeate, and Flynn unfortunately got the bad side of the coin. No matter who you are, going through a traumatic event like Flynn did just now leaves scars, and in the next half of the issue, we see how deep those scars run.
Four Days Later…
Time passes. Four days later, we rejoin our trio of Milton, Anders, and Emil after their escape from the resistance base. They have made their way to a farm, and Anders claims to know the people inside and says they can be of assistance. After a nice moment of levity between the trio, Anders enters the farm's home and is immediately pulled to the ground and about to have his throat sliced open before Milton knocks the stranger off him. The stranger is revealed to be Flynn, and Milton embraces his friend.
Flynn, Milton, Anders, and Emil sit down, talk, eat, and rest in a brief moment without any danger. Milton and Anders don’t seem to notice anything amiss, but Emil’s reactions to Flynn tell an entirely different story. From the moment he sits down across from Flynn at the table, he eyes him very nervously with a hint of fear in his eyes. Daniel Acuna’s art is killer over the course of this entire issue, but one of the best things he did was show how terrified Emil is of Flynn with his facial expressions. There’s something Emil really doesn’t like about Flynn; despite him being the youngest member of the group his senses that something is up.
After Milton patches up Flynn, the group begins to leave the farm and make their way to the rendezvous point. I don’t want to say too much more about where the story goes from here because the dialogue and conversation that follow reveal that things may be reaching their end a lot sooner than anticipated. I do, however, want to comment on the declining mental state of Flynn.
Four days after the murders, Flynn seems to have completely abandoned any principles he once had about saving any of these people. He not only tells Milton he hasn’t been sleeping for four days but that he’s been hyped up on Benzedrine to keep himself awake. Benzedrine was the first pharmaceutical brand of Amphetamine sold, and at its core, it is a stimulant. Safe to say, Flynn’s mental health isn’t doing great, and he now chooses to see this incident as an excuse to see every Narenian as the enemy. Any level of trust he has for even the civilian population is long gone. He’s come to terms with the actions he committed four days ago very quickly and the last gruesome discovery we are shown in the barn shows that he doesn’t have it all together at the moment.
Without Anders’ help, Milton never would’ve stopped the Titan cannon, and Flynn simply responds, “a good bat still has fangs.” He can’t see past the events of four days ago. This new dynamic that has now been thrown into Milton’s little group is going to be very interesting to follow as the book continues through its next issues. Will Flynn do something to hurt Anders? Will he try to hurt Emil? If the choice comes down to saving Flynn or the Narenian and his son, what will Milton do? Remender has set up some very interesting threads as Milton’s story continues.
Before we wrap up, I want to make sure I give Daniel Acuna his flowers for this issue as well. He has been killing it over the course of this entire run, and this issue is no different. One really cool thing I noticed over the course of the first half of the issue with Flynn’s initial story is that the tone of the story matches the time of day. It begins with Flynn initially finding some help behind enemy lines, but as the day grows shorter and night creeps in, the darkness of the night matches the horrific acts that occur inside the Narenian household. A second thing I want to point out is how differently Flynn is portrayed through the art in the second half of the issue. His features are shrouded in shadow a lot, and it matches his new disposition, with all his thoughts of the Narenians becoming darker as the days pass. Like always, the way Acuna draws the facial expressions of the characters is second to none, and you truly get a feel for how a character is feeling every time you see their face.
Rick Remender and Daniel Acuna are on a generational run with Escape. This ninth chapter, which features a focus on Milton Shaw’s squadmate Flynn, delivers massive emotional moments and shows how quickly war can break even the strongest soldier down. There are some books that don’t match the hype that they generate, but this one surpasses it. Remender and Acuna continue to make magic.
Rating: 10 out of 10
HIGHLY Recommended