Review by Frank Plowright
Unusually for a package ostensibly promoting a relatively recent Rogue Trooper story, When a G.I. Dies begins by reprinting a 1984 tale by Gerry Finley-Day and Cam Kennedy. That’s because ‘You Only Die Twice’ is the starting point for Garth Ennis.
In his introduction Ennis is charitable about Finley-Day being too busy thinking of the next story to bother with tying up loose ends, and elements of this particular story prompted his own. Finley-Day has Gunnar’s chip implanted in a new body, but has he also been reprogrammed to kill Rogue? It’s also found in Rogue Trooper: The Complete Collection 2, and the taut thriller with the background of suspicions stands as Finley-Day’s best work on Rogue, with the added benefit of great art from Kennedy.
The ending is where Ennis picks up for a continuity implant. Gunnar is again in chip form, but does he still have modified abilities programmed into him? And just who was behind the attempt to trap Rogue and why? Ennis switches between Rogue still roaming a planet and group of people in HQ, while also referencing other earlier adventures. A logic is applied to events in a way Finley-Day plain never cared about when supplying the serialised weekly action, building a still dangerous conspiracy within a black-ops budget.
Patrick Goddard definitely takes Kennedy’s layouts as the starting point for his own interpretation of Rogue, the look meaning it fits the original stories sweetly. As is the case with previous Rogue Trooper artist Colin Wilson, because Goddard’s style isn’t greatly distinctive it might be the excellence isn’t properly appreciated. He packs the panels on occasion, recreates the desolation occupied by Rogue in others, and really puts the effort into the technology.
What for some while seems a homage to the old Rogue Trooper eventually digs deeper into the past as Ennis supplies a tale of a malign egotistical genius, a Dr. Strangelove type thriving in the chaos of war, along with a virus affecting Milli-Com hardware. He incorporates the female GI’s and offers some thoughts as to the crossover point between life and death. At times it’s unusually introspective stuff for Ennis, and perhaps more easily dealt with in the context of war in the future than in his usual World War II material. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t quite match Ennis and Goddard’s previous Blighty Valley, as beyond a pithy episode sign off or two, Rogue Trooper’s never greatly embraced the spiritual. On the other hand, over the years the feature has hardly been a bastion of quality, and for coherency alone When a G.I. Dies is better than 90% of what’s come before.
Just when you think it’s all over there’s the neat bonus of the first ever Rogue story from Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons.
