Why it matters
It turns Wells' invasion into an imperial aftermath story, using Martian technology to expose Britain's appetite for power.
Scarlet Traces asks what Britain would do after defeating the Martians, and gives the grimly plausible answer: steal the hardware, polish the empire and pretend nothing morally troubling has happened.
Ian Edginton and D'Israeli's Scarlet Traces is a sequel and response to H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Rather than simply repeating the invasion, it imagines a Britain that has reverse-engineered Martian technology after the war. The result is not gratitude or wisdom. It is empire with better machines.
That premise is beautifully steampunk because it understands consequence. Too many speculative histories stop when the marvel appears. Scarlet Traces begins after the marvel has been looted, studied and turned into policy. Martian tripods and alien science become the basis for a new imperial confidence, which is exactly the sort of thing governments would do while calling it progress.
The Wellsian connection gives the work deep roots. The War of the Worlds already reversed imperial fantasy by making Britain the invaded subject. Scarlet Traces then asks whether Britain learned anything from that humiliation. The answer is not flattering. The defeated empire has simply acquired new tools.
D'Israeli's art gives the comic a strong retrofuturist texture: altered technology, period design and a Britain transformed by alien machinery. The visual pleasure is real, but the story keeps prodding the reader to ask who pays for that pleasure. This is how steampunk can use spectacle without letting spectacle off the hook.
The series sits naturally beside The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but its method is tighter. Rather than remixing a whole library, it extends one foundational Wells text into political aftermath. That focus gives it a clean argument and makes it one of British comics' strongest Wellsian steampunk works.
Its best trick is that the technology looks exciting while the politics sour around it. Martian devices are spectacular, but spectacle is precisely the temptation. A defeated Britain could have seen invasion as a lesson in vulnerability. Instead, Scarlet Traces imagines a nation treating alien machinery as a promotion.
This makes the comic useful for distinguishing steampunk critique from steampunk decoration. Tripods, heat-rays and altered vehicles are excellent visual toys, but Edginton and D'Israeli keep asking what happens when toys become policy. That is where the work earns its place.
The title itself is nicely grim. The traces are not only narrative clues. They are stains left by war, empire and technological appetite. Wells supplies the original wound; the comic follows the scar tissue.
The work also benefits from being a comic. Martian technology has always been visual: tripods, heat-rays, impossible scale and the horrible elegance of machines that make human artillery look provincial. D'Israeli can make that altered Britain visible at once, then let the story ask what the image costs.
As a reading path, Scarlet Traces is best approached after Wells. Knowing The War of the Worlds makes the reversal sharper. The original invasion becomes not an ending but a dangerous inheritance.
Is it really steampunk?
Yes. Scarlet Traces is Wellsian steampunk: alternate history, retrofuturist machinery, imperial critique and Martian technology repurposed into human power. It is not simply adjacent. The engine is bolted directly to nineteenth-century scientific romance.
Readers interested in The War of the Worlds, imperial critique and comics that understand the ugliness behind beautiful machines should read it. It is a reminder that reverse engineering is not the same as moral improvement.
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