Storming Paradise

I picked up an interesting looking TPB in the Forbidden Planet sale on Saturday and have just gotten around to reading it. Storming Paradise collects the six issue mini series of comics set in the alt-history Operation Olympic invasion of Japan in late 1945.

Olympic has always been a fascination of mine and many moons ago, after reading Alfred Coppel's excellent The Burning Mountain, I started drawing up plans to game it in 6mm (owning a 1/300th US Armored Division at the time). Sadly this was nothing more than a paper exercise and never progressed.

Storming Paradise has started the old brain juices flowing again. Whilst the story is not as detailed as that in Coppel's novel, or the characters as good, the graphics are excellent at encapsulating the potential horror, especially the involvement of civilians in what would have been an extremely brutal campaign. In part it has echoes of Vietnam, in others the Korean War, but is is certainly one of the most fascinating of what-ifs? and would make for an interesting project if you already have access to US WW2 or Korean forces.