Cassidy's Crusaders

(From Bullets, Books and Bylines: a blog about mercenary literature; Galatea InfoWeb, 3144)

Cassidy's Crusaders (Volumes I-IV) by Cameron Kennedy et al. Red Tower Books, 3142. Fiction. Will punch you in the gut and make you cry.

Today we're going to be getting a little more visual then normal for something interesting form the fiction bin. Our subject for today is also rather extensive, so I'm not going to be breaking it down into as detailed a summary as I normally do. Or maybe I’m just going to encourage you to read the thing yourself to get all the juicy bits. As always, this is a bit spoiler-riffic, only of the board sweeping plot points. I'm not going to tell you who lives or dies, even if one of those did break my heart.

Okay, preamble aside, our review for today is Cassidy's Crusaders, volumes I-IV, released by the Red Tower Books It's written by Kennedy Cameron and drawn by a variety lfo luminaries including Carlos Espozito, Rick Wallach and the Flanenco brothers (Who may have been more than two and possibly not even brothers). Wait a moment, you say, drawn? What's this? Am I reviewing a comic book?

Yes, yes. I am.

And before you close your browser in disgust or fill my comments section with claims of my running out of content or lowering my standards or whatever else, do yourself a favour and read my review. Then you can kill me.

Anyway, a bit of background, Cassidy's Crusaders was published by the now-defunct Funtley Publications over the course of twelve years from 3105 to 3117. Funtley exited the comics racket when it was bought out by Bradburton Books in 3122, who also inherited the rights to their characters and titles. It goes around a bit form there, but in 3142, Red Tower bought the legacy rights to the entire Funtley catalouge, save for thirty-four characters created specifically for Bananatron Explosion! Before January 1, 3050. Yes, I’m only scratching the surface here. It's insane.

Back on point. Red Tower compiled Cassidy's Crusaders and relased it as four, monsterous volume covering its entire run. They managed to acquire good-quality artwork masters for the entire run; this isn’t just a recreation form an nth generation scan of a reprint of the original that has been resized three times over the decades. Added to this, they also managed to wrangle interviews with the original writer and artists (well some of them) as supplementary material to the strips themselves.

Okay, enough background already, I hear your scream. So what's this talking funny picture book about?

Cassidy's Crusaders is a war comic about a mercenary unit. Okay, so that's nothing even remotely surprising, and there's been about a bazillion of them so far. What makes this one so important is several things. The first is that this is not some heroic against the odds tale of the best unit in the universe that’s full of Clan Omnimechs and larger then live space heroes. (Thank you, Sonya Brie. Your novels are my guilty pleasure). Truth is, it's anything but.

For starters, the titular Cassidy's Crusaders aren't a big unit, nor are they an amazing one. They're a small unit, struggling to get by. When our story opens they're coming off a contract that they only just broke even on. They lost good men and material, and their commander has just had to take a contract that he was only so-so about because they're otherwise buried in debt and have their creditors breathing down their necks. And while yes, spoilers, this isn't a rags to riches story either. Without saying too much, by the end of the book's run they are far from rolling in the money.

So that's number one. Number two is the storytelling itself. Simply put, this is hard stuff. You're not going to see them defeat impossible odds, effortlessly wipe the floor with their opponents or anything else. This is a gritty, harsh and violent world, where staying alive is a victory in and of itself. The Crusaders taste defeat on more than one occasion, and the writers don't hold back with the 'anyone can die' approach. A character might be built up over the course of several issues, and then suddenly they eat a PPC to the face and are incinerated in an instant. And you can never tell who it will be either. It's heroic, yes, but far from romantic.

The Crusaders are in many ways the heroes of the story primarily because they're the protagonists. They're not good all people either. True, it's not like they're all baby eating psychos, but there are plenty of bad apples within their ranks. At the same time, there are those that have their moments and are willing to put their lives on the line for others or even go beyond the bounds of a contract on principle. So they're not paragons of virtue by any means, but rather very flawed and believable people.

Right, you say. Gritty war story. I get it. So why do I want to read this one? I might as well say this now because you'll find out in the early parts of Volume I anyway, but what really sold this for me is that the Crusaders work for the Word of Blake during the Jihad. Boom. There. I said it. Tidal wave of hateful comments inbound. Now before this degenerates into a political mudslinging fest and the inevitable comparisons to Amaris, this book is anything but pro-Word or an attempt to paint them in a positive light.

Rather, it's the story of ordinary people trying to do their best in circumstances well beyond their control. They’re certainly not the orphanage-burning monsters that are the stereotypical depictions of the Word's mercenary allies. There's moments when they try to do genuine good, but it often comes undone one way or another.

(Did I mention that issue one starts with the Crusaders lifting off form Outrerach in October, 3067? Yeah, Like that.)

The book gives both sides of the Jihad a fair treatment, in so far as it says that everyone was crappy and awful and did horrible things to each other. We've covered enough books here to know that's a good case. Look at my review of Wild Storms: The Bryant Campaign or Bear Has Eaten You for good, well-pulbicised examples of dodgy things the Coalition did. Cassidy's Crusaders runs with that theme. They have horrible allies in the Word, but face horrible people on the other side of the fence as well.

The characters are mostly strong, both for good and for bad. Richard Cassidy is clearly depicted as a good man in a bad situation; he wants to do the right thing by his men, but he also is bound by his contract and a professional code of conduct. It’s this central conflict that inspired his character arc. Alice Cassidy, his daughter and heir, is in over her head and struggling to keep up, and faces the growing realization of how little control she has over her own fate. Chuck Trilsby presents a great 'live form the trenches' point of view character, especially later in the book when his career advances simply because everybody above him has been killed off. And Lieutenant Sneddley (No, I don't think he ever gets a first name) is wonderfully hateable, so much so that you cheer when he suffers his horrific demise. No, I won’t spoil it, but it’s well deserved no less.

There's some great gems among the supporting and guest characters too. Percent or Marie Entenard is wonderfully creepy and just 'wrong' enough without going over the top. For example, the letterers put her speech in a font that is slightly but noticeably different from everyone else's.

Not all the characters are good, I will admit. Neither Percentor Bob Wallis nor Chu-i Jonji Yamashita ever progress beyond 'moustache-twirlingly evil' (Hell, Yamashita even has a moustache). Or there's Star Captain Olaf Gunderson, who's personality begins and ends With RAR KILL YOU.

A few historical characters also appear; for the most part, their appearances are pretty fair and reasonably handled, if not fantastically. The biggest problem with them is that many of the appearances seem forced, as if to say 'look, historical relevance!' more then what they do for the narrative.

Which is one of the comic's biggest structural flaws, by the way. The story does move around a lot from world to world during the Jihad. But there are times when it seems that there's little logical reason for the Crusaders to be assigned to the given job they have beyond putting them in the line of fire of some significant event. While it's not bad, it does detract from the narrative

While the book does go through four (or so) main artists, the artwork does remain consistently good. There's a nice, gritty style here that plays well throughout; no amazingly attractive or heroic characters, but lots of dirty, grimy and worn people. The cast look like they've been through hell, as does the world around them. Plus as a bonus, the artists have clearly done their research. Not only is the scenery and setting appropriate for each world. But they make sure the 'Mechs and other tech are appropriate to the time. All of them are well rendered and distinct, instead of being generic blobs or obviously copied from the nearest reference photo.

And as an added bonus, the interviews at the end of each volume shed a lot of light on the creative process behind the book, the decisions they made and so on. It also includes the rather sad tale of the story’s cancellation. Cameron had big plans for the unit, but the editor's wouldn't approve his research budget, claiming that the 'demographics were shifting' and 'nobody wanted another war story'. I won't say what those plans were (As what do you know, they do kind of spoil the outcome) but It would have been fascinating to see where they would have gone.

All in all, it's a great read and very satisfying on a number of levels. Strong characters, great artwork and a 'pulls no punches' approach to storytelling. The characters may be fictional, but their stories feel real.

About the author: Cameron Kennedy was born on Towne in 3077. He was hired by Funtley Publications almost fresh out of high school, and began his career doing filler work on a number of different books including Splat, Fight!, Fear and Bananatron Explosion. His first fulltime job came with the launch of Action Battleforce, where he created (and wrote) a number of early strips including Red Wolf, Storm's Strikers, Sergeant Stone and FSS Fearless. His career was defined by a combination of big breaks and fights with editors, often over content. Following the cancellation of Action Battleforce, he primarily wrote for children’s humor comics until Funtley's closure. Since then, he has written across a number of different projects, primarily comics and prose. He lives on Towne and still regularly writes very angry blog posts.