The Secret History Omnibus Volume 2

Fairly beaten up. Spine starting to come off.

This whole series is very worth buying. The art is done by several artists, but all of them are good. The story line is one continuous arc, following near-immortal characters through 1,000's of years of history. It's very cool how the author merges his characters with existing historical events.

Really interesting take on history, well written, and just a good read. I read a review that said there was too much writing and these a lot for your standard comic but it is a good piece of fiction and once you get into it the amount of reading I dont think will bother most people.

This second volume is more absorbing than the first. This is probably the case because it occurs in our more recent history covering the end of WWI to the finishing of WWII. Also, the story is just as layered, complex and sometimes a little confusing (but I think the blame is not in the complexity of the story but the small format that lends visual nuances into obscure things that the reader has to backtrack to get).As usual the writing is sharp, informed and engaging. It's easy to care about what happens to even the ancient archons as they try to deal with the dubious, ambitious and sometime petty aspirations of mortals while also having to deal with their own shortcomings. The nice thing about this volume is the way history, for the sake of storytelling, is no longer covered in leaps and bounds. We have a much more linear and relevant take on the things that happen, why they do and the effects they have on our history. The fascination of Jean-Pierre Pecau's writing is still in his passion to explain actual history in a way that makes it work almost seamlessly with his fictional narrative, like the reader is getting a look at both history and the reason history gets wonky from time to time. Those wonky bits are explained in the context that the archons and their meddling are the real story that can't be told in history books.As usual the art provided by Igor Kordey is historically accurate to a tee and personable. These are real people in real events. The expressions on the characters faces on down to clothes they wear is refreshingly researched and artfully rendered. Even the lighting and Chris Chuckry's color work are like nothing else in comics. Visually stunning, well rendered and accurate, what else could a reader want?The only thing keeping this book from getting a resounding 5 stars is the small format. This collection and the individual books are reproduced, down, from their original European format. The European size also has a wider aspect ratio making it even smaller than a direct reduction to accommodate our comic printers. Ah, the bane of our American translations. Still I'll take this over taking the time to learn French. Lazy me.

expansion of the original storyline makes for a rather complicated plot. artwork is great.

Amazing book!