(Today: Tales of gods & fishmen, Cable conundrums of war, aural revelation, milking the dead, and capitalizing on a holiday.)
Wheel of Gods
I get my comics via twice-monthly shipments from Westfield, so I’m perpetually behind those who buy their comics weekly. Making matters more extreme, I wait for the majority of material to hit trade editions before buying them. All of which is to say, you’re almost never likely to find me writing about something most comics fans would think about as “new.” In this entry and the one below I catch up on a couple of the more recently read trades.
Something I finally got around to reading a week or so back is volume one of Zander Cannon’s The Replacement God.
This black and white – only in terms of literal ink and paper - story of mythology, spun from whole cloth (save for small elements) works very well. It’s difficult to describe without giving the plot away, though.
The story has adventure, romance, a romantic triangle, ancient prophecies being administered ultimately in a bureaucratic fashion, monsters, faeries, banished warriors who look and speak like beatnik bikers, a world that turns on thousand year reigns by new gods and where a person can aspire to true godhood, and it all centers on young man of such seeming insignificance that he begins the tale without even having a name.
A 216 page start to the tale – yes, you’re left waiting for a volume 2, or perhaps driven to locate later issues in the serialized, comics form – that’s an entertaining trek.
While Cannon’s art style in the end is his own, it reminds me of a 85/15 mix of Kyle Baker and Steve Rude, with some of Dave Sim’s storytelling sensibilities in the mix. If that means nothing to you, no matter. It’s entertaining and generally clear storytelling.
It gets a little muddy in a couple spots, though some of that’s due more to expanded digressions to earlier spots in the story – some of which, I suppose, are a consequence of his wanting to make later issues of the original comics more accessible, and some because the expansions play off what was seen by a character who emerged later in the narrative.
I was entertained, and would have found it worth the full $19.95 (US), though I paid several dollars less than that for mine. Moreover, I want to see how this all turns out, so I’ll be watching for volume 2.
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