Tet #3

Tet, Issue #3 begins with Eugene Smith in an Army hospital in Okinawa.  In issue #2, he is shot three times, including one in the hip.  Now he's learning to walk again, and he has a goal: find his fiancee, Ha. Back in 1984, he has found Ha, married to Bao and living in Vietnam.  Better yet, there's been a huge break in the case of the murder of the Vietnamese official and Eugene's friend, Chip.  In this issue, you find out why he was killed and by whom.

I love the way Eugene, Bao, and Ha have aged since the 1968 timeline, and I haven't even mentioned the colors.  Paul Tucker does both the inks and the colors, and it's fantastic how he begins the issue with tans and browns and ends it with blues and purples.  I really got a feeling of day turning into night, and not just literally.  There are a lot of details most people would miss.  For instance, Ha's wedding dress is red, in the Buddhist tradition.  When I got married in South Korea, my wife wore a red dress with her hanbok.

I have one more issue to go with Tet, and I can only speculate as to what will happen.  Chip's murder has been solved almost too cleanly.  Bao and Ha are married.  It is Tet, 1984, and fireworks are going off in the sky, reminding Eugene of the Tet Offensive.  Good fiction tickles the imagination, and I wonder what walls are going to be broken down in Tet, issue #4.  I'm also pleased to see that Tet will run in paperback, starting in April.