REVIEW: Warhammer 40,000: Will Of Iron

Writer: George Mann
Artist: Tazio Bettin
Colorist: Enrica Eren Angiolini
Review: Madman

Hells yes! I’ve wanted this comic for a long, long time, like eighteen years long, long time. I’ve been a huge fan of the table top miniature game Warhammer 40,000 for a long long time, like 22. You could say I was weaned into gaming in most regards with Warhammer. For those that don’t know, 40k involves moving miniature plastic troops, tanks, and just about any war machine you could possibly imagine coming out of the 41st Millennium around a 4x6ft table. That and a big damn rulebook with detailed specifics pertaining to every situation and individuals stats for each miniature dude. At first it was just some random thing that my buddies and I stumbled unto . . . it was better than Nintendo . . . it was before the internets . . . a reason to hang out. In the heyday of my youth when we were haunting our parents' basements braving: moldy spiders, head wounds from mashing into a light bulb, the smell of wood stored in the room next door, or (as rumor had it) a ghost. That’s pretty much all we did for a couple of years. I took a hiatus from all things involving a permanent residence during most of my 20s, and it wasn’t until 15 or so years later that I bought back into the hobby. Towards the end of my youthful run Games Workshop, the company that produced 40k, started to produce a comic series, and it was glorious. I loved that hell out of that comic back then and have read them many times since. I am so glad they’re back.


The first of the new Titan Comics series is called Will of Iron, and it’s focused on the Space Marine chapter known as the Dark Angels. There’s a lot of fluff pertaining to this chapter in the 40k lore, but to cut a long story short, some members of the chapter betrayed the Emperor and joined forces with the evil heretics. Now the Dark Angels purge for redemption. It’s long and complicated. If you really care just Google Warhammer 40k fluff or something I’m sure you’ll be eyeball deep in all you’ll need.

When I last read the comic it was still sans color, just black and white gothic-style . . . almost gritty . . . Today in the digital age we get blessed with crazy views of foreign planetary systems and other strange cosmic images, and it’s glorious. The writing has been spot on as of issue #2. Even though I’ve been around for awhile the story has kept me interested and anticipating more. I mean what guy doesn’t like the Good vs. Evil showdown to the death, right? Tazio Bettin is killing the artwork though. He has drawn everything just as I have imagined it in my head all this time, and it’s pretty epic. I’m super excited, not only for the next issue of this mini-series but also for the future series that the powers that be have planned. In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.