Having had a website about John Marsden’s “Tomorrow” series of books since 1998 I do not know how I managed to miss this series of comics. I only just found out about it when someone posted about reading it again due to threats about “invading” Greenland and the Panama Canal by a certain president. I started reading the trad paperback on ingurgitation day for the USA president in 2025.

Straight up comparing the Tomorrow series to this book is not really evenly balanced but even just with the first book Tomorrow When the War Began you get the feeling you are reading about real people while in this series it is more broad archetypes who are there to serve a purpose in the story.

Ellie in the Tomorrow series is a definitive voice of the series and was just an ordinary high school student when the war began. Amber is meant to have been similarly young when the USA first invaded but you don’t really know that much about her during the story apart from flashbacks and are just expected to buy that she is a cold-blooded killer and freedom fighter. I’m not buying it!

I have to admire the gumption for the author not even bothering to translate the French Canadian dialogue from one of the characters as if they were expecting everyone who read it to already know the language enough to follow.

This series does get into the action a lot quicker than the Tomorrow series and takes it as a given you would accept these characters as freedom fighters and they would be taking on major targets. It does seem a bit much that the US Military is able to find them immediately. Also the over-arching conspiracy behind the war is not realistic as there is no way any government could be that competent.

It is very bloody and gory as you would expect so this one is more for older readers. Not really that subtle in terms of storyteller, USA BAD! HURR! HURR! is the tone of it. Quite apart from the fact that the USA trusted Canada enough at one point to host part of their nuclear arsenal.

With the recent AUKUS pact if the USA starts a war with anyone it means Australia is involved too. There was already the ANZUS treaty that was activated in 2001 but I am not sure Australia would be on their side in this one.

Official rating for me on this one is “son, I am disappoint” there was a good concept here but the execution just didn’t land for me. For a better tilt at this concept see the Tomorrow Series or Camp Zero which also has similar themes of the rich and powerful riding out climate change and actually benefiting from it.

Rating: 3/5

Book details:

by Brian K Vaughan (Author), Steve Skroce (Artist)

Publisher: Image Comics; Illustrated edition (11 April 2017)

Language: English

Paperback: 160 pages

ISBN-10: ‎1534301410

ISBN-13: 978-1534301412

Reading age: 16 years and up

Dimensions: 17.78 x 0.76 x 25.4 cm