Rating: WARTY!
Note that this is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
This volume collects War Mother Vols 1-4 and 4001 AD: War Mother Vol 1. I felt the art was pretty decent except in the occasional back-busting pose the main character was put into for no other reason than to show off her curves. So once again we're back in an adolescent world of male-oriented comics created for males by males, and wherein women are depicted as unnaturally anorexic and preternaturally pneumatic. This story is supposedly set two thousand years into the future, but both mindset and technology are surprisingly unchanged from our present. Evolution, contrarily, seems to have sped-up beyond the bounds of what's reasonable into outrageously fantastical humanoids, all of which, as is typical in this kind of story, seem hostile.
Ana, the titular War Mother, with the emphasis on tit, is for reasons unexplained here, the Scavenger-in-Chief. She lives in a tribal "village" called the Grove, where they can pretty much provide everything for themselves except for technology which for some reason thay cannot master. This flies in the face of the comic's blurb which defines this village as the "last known repository of scientific knowledge." I saw no science here, just vague hints at growing food, which, in a place as lush as this one appeared to be, didn't seem to require much knowledge other than planting seeds and harvesting fruit! It's not like these guys fed millions! It was only a village after all.
War Mother goes on scavenger hunts for things they can use, repurpose, adapt, and trade. Why this technology is so needed goes largely unexplained. That was one big problem with this story: without any backstory, none of this made much sense. During these excursions, Ana often runs into hostiles which she has to despatch using her talking rifle. I never did get why the rifle talks. it was too gimicky for me - like one of those annoying little talking pets in children's cartoons. And why was the talking rifle male? Why even an electronic rifle in a world where electronics were evidently as much at a premium as they were prone to failing? Wouldn't an AK-47 be a better tool in a humid jungle?
The biggest problem though, was once again the main charcter who was far less like a real woman than like a male fantasy - the man-with-tits syndrome which isn't remotely appealing to me. Worse, the author seems to be conflating bad-ass with psychotic. War Mother's only tactic is to dispatch anyone she doesn't like including the leader of her village community who she kills remorselessly and without even much of a preamble.
I didn't really understand why this happened. Rather than try to work with him to resolve their dispute, she simply takes the male anger route and shoots him, and that was the end of that dispute. In doing this, she very effectively destroys the community, so how is she in any way heroic? How is she any better than the villains she takes down? I didn't see any difference. Certainly there was nothing to root for or admire in her.
I didn't see anything edifying or fulfilling here, and nothing truly enjoyable. If it had not been so short, I would have DNF'd it. I was hoping for a lot more than I expected, but I got a lot less than I feared. i cannot recommend this.
