War of the Worlds

Ian Edginton and D'Israeli adapted H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds as a Dark Horse comic released in 2006. The story follows the Martian assault on England through a visual retelling of the original novel's invasion premise.

This is an adaptation of Wells, distinct from the creators' Scarlet Traces, which imagines consequences after the invasion. The two works can be read as complementary but have different narrative jobs.

The adaptation returns the invasion to its period setting, where late Victorian certainty meets a force beyond imperial power. The reversal gives the familiar story much of its bite.

Sequential art can show the scale of the tripods while staying close to human witnesses. Panic and machinery share the same page.

Martian technology makes Britain's military confidence suddenly obsolete. The invasion is a test of how quickly a civilization's sense of superiority can collapse.

The speculation also depends on perspective: people initially struggle to interpret what they are seeing, even as the consequences become unmistakable.

D'Israeli's period environments anchor the alien machines in a recognizable historical world. The visual rupture between ordinary streets and tripods is the story's central effect.

Comics pacing lets an approaching threat fill space gradually, creating dread before direct violence arrives.