I received an advanced reader copy of this for free. I am making this review voluntarily and all opinions are my own.
War of the Worlds: Thunder Child is a companion graphic novel to the classic Sci-fi novel, War of the Worlds. I was very happy to receive an ARC of this because I love the novel and couldn’t wait to dive in. This had some really cool art work and some pretty gory scenes.
Quick Info
- Title: War of the Worlds: Thunderchild
- Author/Artist: Matthew Hardy (writer), Rob Jones (writer), Kevin Castaniero (illustrator), Simon Gough (colouring)
- Publish Date: 30th June 2026
- Format: Graphic Novel
- Genre: Sci-fi
- Sub-Genre: Alien Invasion
- What to Expect:
- Cool art style
- Modernized characters
- Brutal aliens
– Rating: 4 stars –
Trigger Warnings
Gore, death, war, misogyny, colonialism (British Empire)
If I have missed any out or you feel like something should be added, please leave a comment.
Synopsis
HMS Thunder Child is on it’s way back to England, when a mysterious creature falls from the sky. They continue their voyage and when they come across a huge amount of destroyed ships, where they see a giant tripod. They go to help people escape London and end up facing down several of the Martians.
My Thoughts
This has a very cool art style which I enjoyed. The action scenes were well paced and kept that same sense of awe that the original novel did. There is such a sense of hopeless made by the sheer destruction of the martians. It is quite frankly awesome. There were pages in this that could be posters they were beautiful.
The modernization of the characters was fine, it didn’t really affect the story very much. The ship’s captain is a woman, which one of characters has an issue with. The dialogue around this is quite repetitive, considering the short length. There are literal line for line repeats of arguments and every time there is not much push back from any character, so it easily resolved. The characters themselves to me were the least interesting but it’s such a short graphic novel, so there isn’t much space for the characters as the action takes up the majority of the time.
Overall, whilst there are some drawbacks in regards to the characters, this was very enjoyable and easily on par with the original novel by H.G. Wells.
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