Sunday Trade: The Winter Men

The Winter Men story by Brett Lewis, art by John Paul Leon, colors by Dave Stewart & Melissa Edwards, letters by John Workman & Jared K. Fletcher

In the last decade or so there has been an attempt by the Big Two comics companies to tell "realistic" stories. And they've mostly fallen flat or worse. Because realism? Realism is that stuff has consequences. Realism is not being able to solve a problem by punching it. And that isn't how the corporate-owned worlds of DC and Marvel work. So it doesn't matter how much gore is added or how many kids are murdered to provide motivation. Its never going to be "real". Realism is a cold Moscow winter and battle-armor pilots who've been decommissioned...

Kalenov the cop. Nikki the gangster. Drost the soldier. Nina the bodyguard. And the Siberian. The last remnants of the Soviet super-soldier programs. Once they wielded weapons that made them one-man armies, now they just do business like everyone else in modern Russian. But a case involving a kidnapped child is going to bring them back together and force them to confront everything about their past...

A little bit of noir. A sprinkling of supers. A dash of espionage. Mixed together with a giant heaping of Russian cynicism and dark humor. The Winter Men shows that nearly everyone else should be trying a little bit fucking harder...