Review by Ian Keogh
Nazi Germany has provided the background to Bear’s Tooth from the beginning, and during a dozen years from the opening volume the Nazis have risen and fallen. The survivors plan one last defiant era-defining moment in the form of an attack on New York using a just completed experimental plane. Readers who know their history may have feared the title Eva signified a glib dip into even more speculation, but it’s just a homing beacon named after Adolf Hitler’s wife, not the introduction of the woman herself, having miraculously survived death.
There were qualms regarding Amerika Bomber that writer Yann distanced himself too greatly from the original concept of three conflicted friends of the 1930s and what they became. While the period action drama in the dying days of World War II in Europe continues, Eva features greater reference to the past, flashbacks showing how early Hanna combined Nazi ideology with her passion for flying. She also has an interesting interpretation of Madame De Winter’s character in The Three Musketeers, which is an erudite and somewhat anomalous reference to include unless it informs as to her current conflicted idealism.
As has been the case in every episode, Alain Henriet delivers one beautifully drawn page after another, capturing people and their locations along with the technology. Yann provides quite the wordy script in places, so there are pages where the art looks cramped, but Henriet nevertheless supplies delicacy and poise to the people and their feelings. Usagi’s subtle colouring adds a warmth to an otherwise chilly story.
Some readers may be uncomfortable with a sequence where a committed Nazi expands on his unpalatable beliefs, but Yann is being true to history, and it supplies a more identifiable villain. The flashbacks of necessity minimise Max, concentrating on conflicts between Hanna and Werner as they grow apart, but tie in cleverly to events in May 1945. Right before the end there’s a well written page clarifying something Hanna’s previously referenced, and coupled with what she sees when her plane has to make an emergency landing it sets up the finale in Silbervogel quite exquisitely.
