Book Review: The Night Witches by G. Ennis et al.

The Night Witches written by Garth Ennis, penciled by Russ Braun, colored by Tony Avina, and lettered by Simon Bowland

Anna Kharkova is a new recruit to a newly formed aerial unit in the Soviet Union during World War II. The unit is all female and will be flying night missions against the Nazi invaders. They fly bi-planes, which are hopelessly out of date. On their first night raid, the Germans hear them coming and are ready to fire flak before the planes are even near the target. Anna tries cutting the engines a few kilometers out and coasting in. The strategy works much better. The unit gets a reputation among the Germans as the Nacht Hexen or Night Witches.

She works her way up to flying with other men and training a new set of female recruits. Eventually her plane is shot down, leading to capture behind enemy lines. She's shipped off to a POW camp. When the camp is liberated, she is taken back to the Motherland where she's accused of being a traitor. She made no effort to escape, which apparently is considered a betrayal of the motherland. She is shipped off to Siberia where she finally does her "patriotic" duty and escapes the prison camp.

While the story is interesting, there are a lot of odd elements. For some reason, the German baddies use a lot of British colloquialisms--is that supposed to make them seem more bad? The story starts out very pro-Soviet (which is understandable in the story context) and then turns completely against the Communist government. One or two side plots are thrown in that don't really advance the story.

For an unusual and forgotten topic, this has surprisingly average execution.

Slightly recommended.