This is author Theo Houle Behe’s first publication. Johnny Recruit was published in 2022. This is the 70th book I’ve completed in 2022.

Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own! Due to minor scenes of violence, I categorize this graphic novel as PG. Johnny is 14 when he hears that his uncle has been captured by the Germans. Johnny is already an accomplished bush pilot in Canada and a skilled big game hunter. Being a large young man, he is able to lie about his age and join the RCAF. He sees himself as the only one who can rescue his uncle.

I enjoyed the 15 minutes spent reading this 66-page WWII historical fiction graphic novel. The artwork was good, but a little rough. There was almost no dialog, so following the story was difficult. I like the cover art. I give this graphic novel a rating of 3 out of 5.

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'Johnny Recruit' by Theo Behe with art by Thomas Muzzell is a comic book telling a story without words.

Told in wordless full panel pages, this is the story of a Canadian boy named Johnny who finds out his uncle was captured by the Nazis. Johnny fakes his way to the frontlines to try to save his uncle.

The story is, at times, a bit hard to follow without words. The illustrations are really good, done with pen and ink. I read this one a couple times and liked it well enough.

Hmmm... It looks like everything written about this book will focus on the fact the author is still at school, which is of course surprising, but not so startling when you see what this book is. It's actually a collection of just over a dozen full-double-spread wordless images in relation to a certain young Canadian, who clearly went to fight the Nazis at too young an age. We see him get recruited – cue a failure of a fourteenth birthday party – and undergo weapons training, before action and success follow – but not exclusively. There's just about enough for us to follow the character through the scenes, along with his motivations and intent, until the final couple of images, one of which makes no sense to me whatsoever.

The art is clearly the selling point here for me, despite the trivia behind the author's experience. There certainly seems experience here, for the craft involved is brilliant – OK, someone seems to want to gut a deer through the back, but we'll let that slide – and the high-on-perspective angles and direction make any one of these quite poster-worthy black and white images. But do they have enough pulling power to make this slender story a must-buy?

Well, they go as close as they possibly can. To me – no offence to the junior contributor – I would have preferred a different, more narrative-heavy style. The volume's end-matter can find several other celebrated and be-medalled juveniles from the WW2 history books, some in single figures, so there clearly is scope for a more full-on and engaging book to cover the whole topic. If we have to wait until exams are passed for that, then fair enough – but for me this remains a little too much the trivial item to deserve full recommendation. That said, it's a quite eye-opening calling card, so if you ignore it now and find it's worth £2000 in decades to come, don't blame me. Three and a half stars.

A stunningly haunting and strangely moving graphic novel.

This is amazing since there is hardly no dialogue or text boxes.

While I initially found d this frustrating, it actually helped me to take my time, and focus my closely on the large, detailed pictures, and try to work things out for myself.

The descriptions at the end highlighting the real life people depicted is the icing on the cake.