Review by Karl Verhoven

The Old Guard are beings who’re not quite immortal, but whose lives can be measured in millennia rather than decades. Instead of continuing their story in the present day picking up from Force Multiplied, Greg Rucka instead chose to exploit the idea of those incredibly long lives with short stories set any time in the past. He and main series artist Leandro Fernández supply the opening and closing tales, but the remainder let other creators loose on the cast. This isn’t just any old guest list, though, but a snapshot of the industry’s greatest circa 2020.

Given the lives the primary cast have led there’s plenty of potential, and the assorted creators don’t let it go to waste. We have nuns with guns in the 1970s from Jason Aaron and Rafael Albuquerque, a Western from Eric Trautmann and Mike Henderson (sample art left) and a Yukon trapper from Rucka and Fernández. There are stopovers in Nazi Germany from Andrew Wheeler and Jacapo Camagni, the US Civil War from David F. Waker and Matthew Clark (sample art right) and post-revolution France from Alejandro Arbona and Kano. Andy and Booker are the cast members whose activities are most frequently seen, but while Joe and Nicky are also featured, Noriko is restricted to Rucka’s opener and Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro’s contribution. The nearest to a team effort is Vita Ayala and Nicola Scott’s sentimental mission.

Near-immortality is the connecting thread between everything, and it’s a rare story that doesn’t feature a resurrection at some stage. After all, it’s the Old Guard’s USP. There’s enough variety here that provided you like the concept in the first place, the choice of best contribution will be spread wide. Violence at some stage is pretty much guaranteed for a cast who’ve lived their many lives battling, but beyond that the moods are varied from quiet contemplation to absolute rage. Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber manage both in their striking western spotlighting intolerance. “How do you make a ghost town?” asks Fraction’s script. “First you take a town… then you fill it with ghosts” is the response. It’s actually the ending of a finely paced piece of moralising.

This isn’t an earth-shattering selection, but more than value for money, especially as there’s been no sign of a conclusion to the main series since the film version began production.