Black Powder Red Earth: Awbari 2 Creeps Toward An Explosive Climax

Black Powder Red Earth: Awbari returns with its second chapter, and it might not be what you’re expecting if you’ve followed past BPRE stories. Instead of the usual blend of backdoor politics, mission briefings and tactical violence, Awbari Book 2 takes place almost entirely on the Cold Harbor base and features a surprising amount of insight into the contractors and their preparatory methods in the slow build-up to their next operation.

After an opening act that sees Cold Harbor neutralizing a squad of Chinese mercenaries working for the insurgency, the rest of the chapter is spent on the base as we continue to follow the three main contractors: Kino, Cobol and Pro. The next target in their campaign to take down the Aayari insurgency is Naji El Taib, a UK-born terrorist recruiter, key figure in funneling foreign fighters into Awbari, and overall just a very nasty guy. Awbari Book 2 is about all that happens in the lead-up to the raid, and to that end we are treated to an incredibly nuanced look at the Cold Harbor operators and their intelligence gathering techniques.

BPRE’s minimalist storytelling style is out in full force here, treating the reader as a fly on the wall without spelling out plot details within the sometimes inscrutable shop talk. In one of the chapter’s more memorable moments, Kino carefully studies surveillance imagery in the quiet of his room. The scene is portrayed in more detail than you would expect, and that is when one realizes that Awbari Book 2, despite having minimal action or significant plot movement, shows how intelligence gathering is just as critical as the boots-on-the-ground carnage most people expect. Again, there’s absolutely zero handholding to help you understand what exactly they’re doing, and in more than a few instances I found myself having to carefully scrutinize the information a character was reading on a monitor or tablet.

After spending much time in the backrooms of these ice-cold killers, the story doesn’t forget to remind us that there still is a moral element to all this. After a mission briefing, Cobol explains to Kino that Naji El-Taib was formerly an ISIS sex trafficker, and that every Iraqi town Cobol and his comrades liberated bore the gruesome scars of his atrocities. Cobol not-too-subtly implies that he and his Iraqi compatriots want Naji dead, but Kino reminds him that they’re being paid to make every effort to bring him in alive to further develop intelligence on the Aayari network. The Cold Harbor operators may be ruthlessly professional and willing to manipulate and deceive anyone who can lead them to their target, but in a region soaked in centuries of tribal warfare, one could consider their methods to be mild in the face of the enemy’s depravity.

Of course, being a PMC isn’t just about the bloodbaths, but about the bling, too. The contractors are rewarded for their work not just in payment, but in glorious Rolex Pro-Hunters; a striking reminder of the contrasts that define private military work. On one hand, the people operate with the kind of extreme precision and lethality you would only find in the highest tiers of military special operations, while on the other, they shower themselves in rewards like Wall Street bankers.

Visually, Awbari 2 is rich in a much different color palette than its predecessor. While Book 1 was often drenched in orange and red hues, this chapter is overwhelmingly painted in an ice cold blue and gray. We’re knee deep in the secretive backrooms, bearing witness to the Machiavellian machinations that culminate in Cold Harbor’s red-eyed assassins slaughtering Islamic extremists and Chinese mercenaries with terrifying precision. To even further drive home the slower and more introspective pace, the book devotes significant space to showing characters’ nonverbal reactions to each other. The amount of dialogue continues to be relatively minimal, leaving you to fill in the spaces of silence with your own careful study of the plot.

If there’s one moment that sums up Book 2 in a nutshell, it’s during a curiously lengthy section in which the characters share their preferred ways of making coffee. Pro, arguably the most crass and outspoken of the three who loves custom cars as much as Rolexes, uses a coffee maker for its speed. Kino, on the other hand, prefers to French press his coffee. It’s a slower and more complex process, but yields better tasting coffee. Actual execution must be preceded with meticulous planning. It’s a microcosm of the chapter in general: slow and complex, all in service to what is surely going to be a thunderous climax in the next chapter. If the previous series, Yemen, is anything to go by, we’re likely to see unexpected twists, plans going awry, and copious gratuitous violence. Here’s to Awbari Book 3.

Learn more about Black Powder Red Earth and purchase at the official website

Black Powder Red Earth Awbari 1: Of Drones, Anime, and Fake News

The world of mercenaries is getting more dangerous and the competition is growing fiercer, and for the men that live and breathe this world, that means the paychecks never stop. This seems to be the central message so far in Book 1 of Echelon Software’s Black Powder Red Earth: Awbari, the latest of the BPRE graphic novels originally created by Jon Chang and Kane Smith. Awbari is the follow-up to Black Powder Red Earth: Yemen, and follows a unit of private military contractors called Scorch.

The general flow of the story will be familiar to anyone who has read previous BPRE installments: a lengthy and rather violent combat sequence followed up with post-mission shop talk at the base, friendly banter between the mercenaries, and a gradual setup for the next book. It’s a very systematic approach that eschews conventional storytelling, but as explained in my review of Yemen, it’s all in service of portraying the cold, calculating game of chess played by the series’ central PMC, Cold Harbor. This time, however, Awbari expands on things in a number of ways. Right off the bat, the artwork is astonishingly vivid and brought to greater detail thanks to the book’s larger size compared to other graphic novels. A great level of attention has been paid to depicting the operators’ gear and combat tactics with maximum accuracy, which should come as no surprise given the fact that BPRE’s unique brand of storytelling is informed by real-life accounts from special forces veterans. The use of colors deserves mention, too: instead of the deliberately limited palette in Yemen, Awbari is in full color and bathes its scenes in different hues depending on the setting, thus achieving a perfect balance between the grittiness of Yemen and the wider range of colors from an earlier series, Syria. For readers like myself who sometimes found it a bit hard to tell what was going on in Yemen because everything was depicted in varying shades of gray and red, this is a most welcome change.

On the storytelling front, Awbari expands on the tried-and-true BPRE formula in a couple of very interesting ways. During the opening raid sequence, Scorch cuts through the usual AK-47 wielding jihadi fodder with satisfying ease, but they subsequently encounter professional opposition wielding body armor and tricked-out modern AK variants. This necessitates the use of drones, but these aren’t your daddy’s Reaper drones. No, in the world of BPRE Awbari, drones have reached the next terrifying stage: instead of a lone missile-toting drone flying overhead, it’s now a swarm of smaller, explosive laden drones crashing into their targets like kamikaze fighters. In Yemen, the Cold Harbor contractors had to bail themselves out of sticky situations with the aid of QRF (Quick Reaction Force); soldiers and Little Bird choppers flying in at a moment’s notice. Now all it takes is a guy sitting in front of a computer and his army of suicide drones.

Technology is what drives change in the PMC world, and the point is made all the more clear when the protagonists learn that the jihadis are growing more sophisticated thanks to the arrival of cheap but effective signal jamming technology supplied by the 21st century’s evil empire, China. Instead of reacting with worry, the Scorch agents are delighted, as a more advanced opposition equates to more demand for their superior services, thus guaranteeing fatter paychecks down the road. In one particularly striking scene, the operators watch as an ISIS stronghold bursts into flames as a jet flies over it, bombarding the town not with explosive ordinance, but with all kinds of radio signals designed to detonate IEDs being stored in buildings. This is what the book’s glossary calls a Courtesy Burn, and it’s yet another fascinating display of BPRE’s brand of near-future military fiction that is rarely seen in other similar works.

Despite the dazzling tech display, Awbari spends more time humanizing its characters compared to previous series. Contrasting the faceless, red-eyed killers that move and kill with inhuman precision, the Scorch operators are shown in a much different light during their down time, after they’ve set down their weapons and washed the blood off their bodies. They are shown watching anime, assembling Gundam-like action figures, ordering customized rims for their cars, and enjoying a meal together filled with friendly banter. Nothing seems to faze the Scorch guys; these are veterans with a wealth of experience and are operating with a bigger budget, fewer restraints, and much higher salaries compared to when they were in the military. Of particular note is a moment when they watch a cable news report of their raid, which is falsely reported by the curiously named ANN (Asshole News Network?) as a “campaign of terror” in which Scorch apparently massacred children in their homes. The Scorch guys aren’t the least bit outraged and react with cynicism, because after all, they’re private contractors operating at the behest of their client, the Awbari government. It’s a rare moment when BPRE reaches outside of the bubble of clandestine operations, backroom deals and gear galore to show how the ordinary world sees and completely misunderstands them.

The incorporation of media malpractice, which has been happening with outrageous frequency over the past few years, along with the specter of China making inroads into a world formerly the exclusive hunting ground of the West, is yet another way this latest installment of BPRE reflects the world today. It’s remarkable that just in its first volume, BPRE Awbari manages to capture so many aspects of the private military world of the 2020s – the combat, the technology, the personal habits of its characters, and the media aspect. Although Scorch is off to a good start in this book, there’s no doubt that subsequent volumes of this amazing series will take them down an even deadlier path.

Visit the Black Powder Red Earth website for more info and to purchase.

Black Powder\\Red Earth: Yemen – There’s No Call of Duty In This Modern Warfare

If you have even a passing interest in military stories, both fiction and non-fiction, you’ll know that the most crucial element that these stories live and die by is accuracy. Are the characters correctly demonstrating military protocol in their tactics, dialogue and use of equipment? Does the story reflect the chaos and moral grayness of warfare? Is violence depicted in all its unkind glory? It’s an incredibly hard thing to get right, given the near-infinite levels of complexity within the military world; a world with its own set of rules so foreign to civilian life that those who leave it often find themselves at a total loss as to what to do.

Black Powder//Red Earth: Yemen, a graphic novel by writer John Chang and artist Josh Taylor, is arguably the most realistic, well-researched and visceral works of modern military fiction that delves into the unexplored realm of private military contractors. They’re often depicted as cannon fodder or convenient villains in many other military works, but in BPRE we get to see an honest and realistic portrayal that is as refreshing as it is labyrinthine.

BPRE follows Cold Harbor, a PMC (Private Military Company) that, officially, has established operations in Yemen to train the local military (or “indig”, as they put it) and protect foreign aid workers. In reality, they are there to hunt ISIS. Without the diplomatic shackles and threat of repercussions that would normally keep a conventional military in check, Cold Harbor are free to negotiate under-the-table deals, trade prisoners like currency, work with both US allies and enemies, and backstab them when convenient. One of the most iconic moments happens early in the story: a squad of Cold Harbor operators, led by a man known as Crane, wipe out an Al Qaeda cell on behalf of the Yemeni military. Upon returning to base, they are greeted by an officer, who salutes Crane. Instead of returning the salute, Crane hands the man his business card.

The narrative style is minimalist. There is virtually no captioning, little exposition to set up each scene, and many of the action sequences have little to no dialogue. This is a wonderful example of “Show, don’t tell”, though given the complex nature of the story, I did find myself having to re-read several sections in order to better grasp what was going on. As someone who yearns for more accuracy and authenticity in military works, BPRE at times felt to me like a classic case of “be careful what you wish for”. This is an exhaustively researched story that does not hold your hand at all and requires at least a basic understanding of military lingo, the history of the War on Terror, and the geopolitical situation in the Arab peninsula. For example, one of the key plot elements involves Cold Harbor working with the Houthis to invade an ISIS-controlled town. If you don’t know what the relation between the Houthis, Quds Force and Saudis are, you will have no idea what the hell is going on in the negotiations that follow. That’s the beauty of BPRE, though. It’s a very sophisticated story written for adults, and it expects you, the reader, to be an adult and do your homework if you want to fully appreciate it.

The most striking aspect about BPRE is how brutally honest it is in its portrayal of modern warfare. This is neither a pro-war nor anti-war story; it’s a neutral-war story. There are no heroics, no big morality speeches, and no answering to a higher calling other than the call of profit. Yet, despite their decidedly greed-driven motives, Cold Harbor are shown to be a necessary evil in a country so deeply corrupt that it simply can’t deal with the ISIS threat with its own soldiers. Although BPRE has no shortage of battle sequences against terrorist insurgents, it takes a refreshing approach by devoting much of its time to the backroom deals and tactical planning that allow these battles to take place. We are shown Cold Harbor agents negotiating with a myriad of shadowy figures within the Saudi, Iranian and Yemeni governments; many of these characters would normally belong in the darker side of the morality scale, but even they see ISIS as an existential threat that must be wiped out at all costs. These backroom deals don’t involve suitcases full of money; instead, entire battles are waged by Cold Harbor just so they can capture a specific high-value target and trade him to an interested party for information on their primary ISIS target. The battles often entail collateral damage; scenes of hapless civilians blown apart by bombardment from both sides of the battle are common, and most disturbingly, there’s a sense of resignation in the way these civilians are portrayed. One panel shows a man, his arm sheared off at the elbow from an explosion, calmly walking his son out of the raging battlefield.

Aside from their technological and tactical sophistication, the one thing Cold Harbor has that none of the local forces have is best embodied in Crane: a man who has devoted his existence to waging war, not for family or country, but because he’s good at it and there just so happens to be an enemy no one on planet Earth likes. At one point, he waterboards a captured Al-Qaeda agent for information on ISIS, but unlike what you’ve seen in shows like 24 and Zero Dark Thirty, Crane literally drowns the man, has him brought back from the dead with CPR, drowns him again, revives him a second time, and THEN asks for information. It’s this scene that tells you everything you need to know about the plausible future of BPRE, and the kind of men and methods it takes to wage war on an enemy driven by religious fervor to the point of inhumanity. It reminds me of Colonel Kurtz’s iconic speech in Apocalypse Now: “You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgement.”

The world of BPRE is relentlessly dark, and Jon Chang and Josh Taylor conveys this by simply giving us an honest, no-bullshit look at the world of the modern mercenary. There’s no emotional hysterics, no dramatic character arcs, and no plot twists; there is only the cold, calculating game of chess played by private contractors, religious fundamentalists, rogue generals, and shadowy politicians in their respective quests for personal gain. Black Powder//Red Earth: Yemen is a story about war itself, the likes of which you will rarely, if ever, see in more recognizable works, and is a stunning and important achievement for crowdfunded projects.

If you want to purchase the graphic novel, go to the official website if you’re in the United States. Otherwise, use Amazon (Volumes 1, 2 and 3).