Earlier this year, writer Robert Venditti, best known for his work on The Surrogates, X-O Manowar, and Green Lantern, released Six Days, a World War II story of true-life heroism that not only shone a light on a little-known battle that took place during the final days of the war, but on his own family history as well, since one of his uncles perished in the battle. The book, which centered on a group of American soldiers who had badly missed their mark when being dropped and ended up stranded in a small French town, will now be one of the last original graphic novels ever released by DC’s storied Vertigo imprint.
At the same time, he has been working with DC’s main superhero line, revitalizing Hawkman while breathing new life into the concept of the Freedom Fighters — a team of heroes from Earth-X, a world in DC’s multiverse where the Nazis won World War II and superheroes are, by and large, a disorganized but passionate resistance. And while DC apparently approached Venditti about Freedom Fighters (so this was not his plan), the end result is that the acclaimed writer has published somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pages this calendar year about fighting Nazis — albeit from two wildly different perspectives.
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“I was already working on Six Days — it was already a project that I was working on and talking to Vertigo about — when DC approached me about doing Freedom Fighters,” Venditti told ComicBook.com during a recent interview. “The idea that those two books are going to be on the stands at the exact same time is an amazing coincidence. Working on Six Days, I didn’t feel like I was done with Six Days yet. I felt like I had so much more to say about it, and Freedom Fighters was the opportunity to look at the material from a different perspective. Six Days is about the sacrifice of soldiers and everyday people — people like my uncle Tommy. The world that we have now is the world that we have because of that sacrifice. Freedom Fighters is a way of looking at that same conflict but turning it on its head and saying, what kind of world would we have had if those sacrifices had not been enough? Really it’s the same story — it’s just coming at the center from two different ends.”
Six Days is now available for sale in comic shops, bookstores, and online. Freedom Fighters #7 will hit the stands wherever comics are sold on July 24.
