The Forever War is a 1988 Belgian science fiction graphic novel trilogy drawn by Marvano and closely based on the award-winning The Forever War novel by Joe Haldeman, who has noted that he "supplied all of the dialogue and scripted [the comic] like a movie".
Drawn in the ligne claire style and originally published in Dutch as De Eeuwige Oorlog, it tells the story of William Mandella, an elite soldier fighting for Earth in a centuries-long interstellar war against the 'Taurans'. The series focuses mainly on the dehumanising effects of war and its attendant bureaucracy.
Themes
Staying very faithful to the novel in describing the life of the soldiers and their involvement in various military actions, the graphic novel touches upon themes such as the inhumanity of war (both during combat and in the administration of it) and the change of a society faced with centuries of war footing against an almost totally unseen enemy. Most importantly, it portrays personal experiences of a soldier who, due to pure luck and the Einsteinian time dilation of interstellar travel, fights in and survives the whole length of the war, to end up in a world he does not recognize anymore.
Like the novel, the series is based heavily on Haldeman's experiences in, and thoughts about, the Vietnam War, which are mirrored in the conduct of the military actions and propaganda operations of Earth's military government, especially in its treatment of enemies and the casualties / veterans on its own side. Like its protagonists, the series shows more resignation than outright cynicism at what are depicted as very human failings unchanged throughout history. Haldemann has noted that Marvano managed to include much more of the novel's "first-person ruminations" by Mandella in the graphic novel than the author had originally thought practical.
Plot synopsis
The three volumes of the series span the whole of almost one millennium of war between humanity and the Taurans, an extraterrestrial species that stays enigmatic throughout the series. Due to time dilation, the two main characters experience the whole of the war, biologically appearing to be in their early thirties at the end of the hostilities.
Volume 1: Private Mandella
The first volume mainly describes the training of the Earth elite force, and their first combat with Taurans, focusing on how military ideology is used to form humans into fighting machines, and in how typical the results end up being.
The story starts on Earth in the early 21st century, where Mandella and about a hundred other young men and women of especially promising physical and mental capabilities have been drafted into a special force designed to combat the extraterrestrial threat. All soldiers are of genius-level IQ, and most have degrees in advanced subjects, such as Mandella, who was studying to become a Doctor of Physics. The Taurans are at this stage almost fully unknown to humanity, except for the apparently unprovoked destruction of some of the first Earth colonization ships sent to another star system - an act witnessed only by an automated drone probe.
Sent out both to gather information and as a show of force to reassure a vengeful Earth population, the force first goes through an extremely grueling training period on Earth and on the planet Cerberus (a fictitious planet beyond Pluto, not the satellite of Pluto which had not been discovered at the time the original novel was written). The exercises involve military and technical training under extreme circumstances and with live weapons, including the use of nuclear weapons and various other advanced armaments. They are designed to make Mandella and his compatriots into the most powerful infantry forces ever, to combat a foe whose physiology is still totally unknown. During a lecture to the soldiers, it is noted that they now know many different ways to kill humans - such as with a shovel blow to the kidneys - but are not even aware if Taurans possess kidneys.
After the training period, during which almost 1 out of 10 is killed in accidents and simulated attacks that are fully accepted by the military as part of a realistic training environment, the already quite chastened military force sets off on their journey to the nearest known Tauran base. Their spaceship journeys via a collapsar-jump, a portal through a black hole-like collapsed star - with the crew knowing that due to relativity time dilation, their journey may feel like it takes several months only, yet decades will go by on Earth before their return.