Publisher: Valiant
Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist: Juan Jose Ryp
Colourist: Frankie D’Armata
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Price: $3.99
Valiant
From the title, you might be forgiven for thinking that Britannia: We Who Are About To Die #3 (of 4) is the latest Government Report on the pitfalls of Brexit, but instead it’s the latest offering from ace Brit writer Peter Milligan, who has written just about everything from 2000 AD to Shade the Changing Man.
And now, in Britannia: We Who Are About To Die #3, Peter Milligan unleashes the sword and sandal saga of Rome’s first Detectorist, Antonius Axia. If men in skirts and women in leather, both waving swords around, is your thing, then Britannia: We Who Are About To Die #3 (of 4) is going to be right up your Coliseum – so to speak.
Britannia: We Who Are About To Die #3, features young nobles being murdered, causing mass fear and confusion. Antonius, chosen to be a Detectorist by the Vestal Virgin herself, is trying to get to the bottom of it all. Not that you’d be short of a suspect or two in Nero’s time since the way the lower orders were treated by their “betters” wasn’t exactly calculated to engender peace and harmony between the classes. Antonius’ investigations leads him to a female gladiator called Achillia, a sort of cross between Red Sonja and Emily Pankhurst, trying to stir her female fans into some sort of liberation movement as well as winning her freedom from the Arena.
In Britannia: We Who Are About To Die #3, as Achillia and Antonius face off against a horde of German mercenaries drafted into the Roman army, the sorceress Ellisa works her dire magic on Antonius’ son Ativus. Nero is mad, the rest is Wyrd and if you throw in a living statue of the god Apollo, a reciter of bad poetry in a fig-leaf mankini, you have something for everyone in a pick and mix confection of barbarism and brimstone with a Holmesian motif.
Britannia: We Who Are About To Die #3 might not exactly be Cool Britannia but it’s close enough to wet the appetite of any discerning comic book reader.
Yes, you; you there. Reading this review. Go out a get a copy of Britannia: We Who Are About To Die #3. NOW!
Reviewer: Gary Orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker