NOTE: Some spoilers, but the summary doesn't give away much skipping the dramatic twists and turns. Proceed with CAUTION. 
 Yay! More Canlit (sort of) that doesn't double as a sleep-aid! After decades of government grants and dull essays and hand-wringing over the Canadian identity, a comic-book by the Cleveland-born-Canadian-by-marriage B.K. Vaughan and Genuine-Canadian Steve Skroce has finally given us a reason to be proud of our national heritage. Although... it's speculative fiction that takes place 100 years in the future, and may have been dreamt up after Vaughan got stoned and watched 'The Empire Strikes Back' immediately after the 'South Park' movie, in a serendipitous twist of programming. Fuck it. Good enough. At this point, we Canadians will take what we can get. Umm... up to but probably NOT including manifest destiny and the draining of Great Slave Lake. 
 To be brutally honest, we don't seem to be all that good at revolution and overthrowing oppressive despots and whatnot. And our government doesn't seem that good at saying 'no' to the US. We usually eschew guerilla warfare and rail-guns for petitions and novels by Margaret Laurence and Hugh Maclennan that nobody really likes... not even us. For any Canadians getting confused and irate, muttering something like "what the fuck is this guy babbling aboot about?" Yes. YES. My point exactly. 
 You tell 'em! 
 As terrible as BKV seems to be for television - 'Under the Dome' is a crime for which he will never be forgiven - he keeps doing things right in comics: 'Paper Girls', 'Runaways', 'Y: The Last Man', 'Ex Machina', 'Pride of Baghdad', 'Saga', 'The Private Eye', 'The Walking Dead: The Alien', etc. He has his faults and weaknesses as a writer - lame, jokey dialogue being one of them, but those goofier tendencies are fading - but he's very talented. And Vaughan's 'big-idea-generator' is obviously still functioning smoothly; even if 'Saga' and 'We Stand on Guard' aren't as easy to pitch as 'Y: The Last Man', they're his best titles so far. And 'We Stand on Guard' is already my favorite of the two. Crazy, I know. It's a fun little tale about the White House being bombed and the US deciding to obliterate Canada and occupy the smoldering wreckage. 'Saga' is... well, 'Saga'. The big fucking space opera epic that even non-comic readers love. Nevertheless. Being Canadian adds a cool and righteous twist to the proceedings that Canadians rarely get from their fiction... but I always root for the 'freedom fighters', underdogs, and bad guys anyway. 
 But the artwork is what makes this truly spectacular. All that time hanging around Geof Darrow did some very good things to Skroce's style. His art was always well-executed -- especially when compared to the work of other Marvel and Image artists from the 90's -- but the Euro-comic clean-line style he lets loose with here is fucking incredible, made even better by the painted colors of Matt Hollingsworth. Digitally painted, I guess, though he's been known to use a real brush, too... it's a testament to his skills that it's hard to tell at times. He's still one of the very best colorists in comics, showing his usual subtlety, restraint, and tastefully muted palette. But Skroce's the star of this show, drawing the hell out of every panel, showing his gift for realistic mechanical designs on the many 22nd century vehicles and weapons and Otomo-Shirow-brand Mecha-monstrosities. The bold black outlines, minute detail and economical texturing all suggest the strong Geof Darrow influence, though Skroce has his own stylistic idiosyncrasies. And if you don't think the years spent working as a farmhand with Darrow on the Wachowski Concept and Storyboard Art-Ranch is behind his awesome artistic metamorphosis, here's exhibit 'A' -- from the mid-00's, his last trip to the world of comics before WSOG: 
 Skroce's comic 'Doc Frankenstein', published by Burlyman -- the Wachowski-owned comic-book publisher devoted exclusively to Skroce and Geof Darrow. Doc Frankenstein is definitely in long-time Darrow territory here, in a Shaolin Cowboy-inspired spread: 
 As wacky and implausible as the premise might sound at first, it's tone is a bit darker than I expected, though far from gloomy. The violence gets very brutal, and it's made all the more shocking by the ultra-fine details of Skroce's rendering. Suspending the knee-jerk disbelief isn't all that difficult either, when you consider the historical precedents, and ruminate on how dramatically the fate of friends and nations can change over the course of a century. 
 The story begins in Ottawa, with a family watching news footage of the drone bombing that will soon change everything. After her parents are killed in America's not-so-witty rejoinder to the White House attack, bombing Ottawa flatter than the prairies, we follow young Amber across 12 years and thousands of kilometers, North(ish) into the Yukon Territories. She is now alone and hunting caribou -- her older brother Tommy was apparently captured by the Americans -- when she encounters a patrolling 'Dog of War' sentry and is rescued by an appropriately rag-tag group of spunky resistance fighters calling themselves 'The Two-Four'. A Lucasfilm homage follows when the Two-Four take on a massive AT-AT-type mecha-beast on their snowy sub-Artic battlefield, culminating in some dramatically bloody surprises as they welcome Amber to the fold. 
 She passed her first test, but Amber still gets blindfolded as she's led to the good ol' secret rebel base. When one of the Two-Four is captured, we get to see what the 'humane torture' of the future might look like, since there's always going to be people who can claim something like 'humane torture' exists and actually believe it. Things get stickier for our rebel heroes, as the possibility of discovery threatens their base, knowing that even the strongest person will eventually break under torture; but their reclamation projects involving fallen mecha-monsters makes them unwilling to leave until they know they've been given up. By then, of course, it'll probably be too late. The plot moves quickly, but I found myself deliberately slowing to examine the art -- that's usually the sign of a 5-star comic, and this is no exception. For a 160-page story, the characters are remarkably well-defined, with the quick and broad brush-strokes that writing like this requires. Amber and her brother's story is told in brief flashbacks throughout the 6-issue run; even though something ominous seemed to be building up steam, but never really materialized as the huge, shocking twist I was waiting for, I can't complain about a writer failing to be predictable. The huge Great Slave Lake showdown between the army of drones and robo-puppies, led by the patriotic torturess known (somewhat ironically) as 'The American', and the far-overmatched Two-Four rebels, is a thing of terrible and entertaining beauty. BKV doesn't give the reader anything mind-blowing with 'We Stand on Guard', but it has originality, excitement and clever details a-plenty. 
 Another way that this book excels is as a low-key satire; 'We Stand on Guard' takes US foreign policy to its final, logical absurdity, substituting oil for water and long-demonized nations like Iraq for America's closest friend and ally. The ecological warnings are there too, of course. But if that sort of thing just annoys you, don't worry about it. This isn't obnoxiously preachy or self-righteous, and the satire's light enough that you could say I imagined it. You'd be wrong, but you could say it. 
 Finding authentically and exclusively Canadian touchstones -- not the lame shit about beer and hockey, I'm thinking more along the lines of Farley Mowat or Degrassi Junior High -- isn't that easy for outsiders like BKV... so I particularly appreciated the details, like the brief reference to 'The Littlest Hobo'. The theme song to 'The Littlest Hobo' should replace 'O, Canada' as the national anthem. 
 The Canadian 'Dog of War'! If you don't believe a dog can use a rifle, you're seriously underestimating 'The Littlest Hobo'. He beat former-PM Jean Chretien at 'Scrabble', convinced Quebec to give national unity another shot, AND foiled the kidnappers by saving the wealthy rancher's daughter! 
 Since I've been stuck reading digital copies, I'm looking forward to this deluxe hardcover version, though it's going to be a five month wait. Image always does a great job with their collected editions. Liberte, egalite, fraternite! (No, it's not Canadian, but all our motto's suck.) 
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