Eternal War is a collection of Warhammer 40K stories. For those who don’t know what Warhammer 40K is, it’s the massive setting that the tabletop war game Warhammer 40K is placed in. Here, humans battle Eldar (Elves), Orcs, Chaos, Tyranids (think Aliens but more high tech) and other horrors. The future is a grim place and war is the name of the game.

Right off the bat, Eternal War annoys me. No table of contents and no page numbers. Now if this was just a single collection of one character, or storyline, it wouldn’t be a problem, but it’s a collection of various tales. Not having a table of contents and page numbers is aggravating.

The art styles vary. Some of them are almost like charcoal paintings. Take Single Combat, illustrated by Kev Hopgood. A battle between Chaos and the Eldar leaves a single Eldar warrior alive who must overcome tremendous odds to insure that the deaths of his brothers aren’t in vain as one last chaos spawn seeks victory. Great art all around.

The terror of death suffers what many of the comics in this volume suffer from. Being too crowded. Multiple illustrations per page with text balloons made the page very crowded. Add a heavy use of black to the image and you’ve got a very crowded page with too much going on for the eye to easily follow.

My own favorites include the two part Ravenwing where we see Space Marines riding futuristic motorcycles battling against a horde of orcs. Despite being in two parts, it’s a short little piece that manages to capture the superiority of the Space Marines and their smug demeanor even in the face of death as well as their ingenuity. Not always is victory claimed by straight out slaughter as demonstrated in other tales here.

My second favorite is Last Man Standing, drawn by Mike Perkings. The art here doesn’t suffer the claustrophobic problem that others suffer and shows what a normal human, non-augmented Space Marine scout, is capable of. In many ways, it showcases what a space ranger or stalker would be like, using stealth and the shadows, and the enemies own curiosity, against them.

If you’re looking to get into the Warhammer 40K universe, this isn’t a bad place to start but probably isn’t the best as there are no stories that really serve as an introduction to the universe. It’s more a collection of tales that focus on humanity’s struggle with the lone exception of the Eldar tale.