The Hedge Knight #6

May 16, 2004

Quick Rating: Great

The champions selected, the Trial of Seven begins… and Dunk’s life hangs in the balance!

Writers: George R.R. Martin & Ben Avery
Pencils: Mike S. Miller
Inks: Mike Crowell
Colors: Team Kandora
Letters: Bill Tortolini
Editor: Robert Silverberg
Cover Art: Mike S. Miller (Cover A); Ted Nasmith (Cover B)
Publisher: Devil’s Due/DB Pro

After striking a prince to protect an innocent girl, Ser Dunk has been forced to find six men willing to fight with him against the King’s men in a Trial of Seven. Last issue he gathered his warriors, including good Prince Baelor, uncle of Dunk’s accuser. This final issue of the miniseries deals with the ferocious Trial and its aftermath.

Martin and Avery have done their homework. This isn’t a sanitized joust like you get on TV and in the movies. This is swift, brutal, and deadly for good men as well as bad. Dunk, who carries the secret that he was never truly knighted before his master died, is forced to become a knight on the field of battle by resorting to the sort of non-chivalrous fisticuffs that he learned as a boy, before he was taken in by the late Ser Arlen.

This story marks an end for several characters, while for almost everyone else a new chapter is begun. This story, although set in the world of Martin’s popular Song of Fire and Ice series, is set a good hundred years before those novels, and I don’t know how much overlap there actually is between the stories. It seems far enough in the past that anything is really possible.

Miller’s art continues to impress the way it has since the first issue and throughout his run on G.I. Joe Versus the TransFormers. He has a sort of style that is clear but still powerful, structured well and remains distinctive. The battle scenes in this issue take place in the mud, and Miller, Crowell and the coloring team show the gradual change as our heroes begin in bright, shining armor and gradually become covered with dirt, grime and blood. This is simply some of the best artwork in comics today, and I’d go so far as to say Mike Miller is the best working artist who’s not a star, and he’s a far cry better than a lot of artists who are.

The Dabel Brothers (of DB Pro) seem to be making their mark on comics, at least at first, by adapting novels (although I am extremely excited about Miller’s upcoming original project, The Imaginaries). Hopefully they’ll come back to this world before long – there’s already a sequel to The Hedge Knight called The Sworn Sword, not to mention the several books in the Song of Fire and Ice cycle. There’s plenty of room to tell more stories in this setting, and if they’re all as good as The Hedge Knight, I can be counted on to follow them all.

Rating: 9/10

Lullaby: Wisdom Seeker #2

April 30, 2005

Quick Rating: Very Good

As Pinocchio faces a new threat, Alice may be meeting new allies.

Plot: Mike S. Miller & Andres Ledesma
Script: Mike S. Miller & Ben Avery
Art: Hector Sevilla
Colors: Simon Bork, David Curiel & Ulises Arreola
Letters: Bill Tortolini
Editor: Mike S. Miller
Cover Art: Hector Sevilla
Publisher: Image Comics/Alias Enterprises/DB Pro

Review: This new fantasy series from Alias Enterprises continues, and it succeeds on many of the same levels on the first issue. We open up on a strange, twisted version of Little Red Riding Hood, a girl who has somehow become half-wolf, and is now traveling the woods with the Pied Piper. Together, they come face-to-face with a rather hideous, porcine woodsman, as Alice looks on.

Meanwhile, Jim Hawkins and Pinnochio come to the rescue of a pair of familiar children that are lost in the wilderness. There’s a nice little battle scene, and we see more of what makes these characters different from their classic counterparts. (Halfway through the issue, for instance, it hit me why Pinnochio refers to himself as “it,” and it breaks the heart). We also get the first hint of the true menace in our prologue, as a mysterious figure (with a disturbingly familiar fashion sense) sets his sights on one of our heroes.

The first issue switched far too abruptly from one set of characters to the other. This issue is a little better about that, swinging back and forth between our two main groups of heroes freely, and helping the story feel more cohesive. It’s not perfect – there’s still not much of a hint as how the characters will come together in the second half of this miniseries (yes, an ongoing will follow from Alias after their deal with Image ends, but you’ve got to judge this on its own merits), and it’s never entirely clear what becomes of the children Jim and Pinocchio save.

Hector Sevilla, creator of the series, does a beautiful job on the art chores. While he does have some Manga flavor to his style, that’s clearly not his only influence – he has a lot of American superhero influence and does some really imaginative stuff for the monsters and creatures that are all over this book.

I’m still enjoying this comic book very much and highly recommend it for anyone who’s trying to lure in new readers, particularly young ones. However, I have to admit, I’m starting to suspect this is a story that will read much better in collected form.

Rating: 8/10

The Hedge Knight #5

April 3, 2004
Quick Rating: Very Good

A Trial of Seven is proclaimed for Ser Dunk’s life… but who will fight with him?

Writers: George R.R. Martin & Ben Avery
Pencils: Mike S. Miller
Inks: Mike Crowell
Colors: Team Kandora
Letters: Bill Tortolini
Editor: Robert Silverberg
Cover Art: Mike S. Miller (Cover A); Ted Nasmith (Cover B)
Publisher: Devil’s Due/DB Pro

For his skirmish with Prince Aerion, Dunk is sentenced to a Trial of Seven. He must find six knights willing to stand with him in battle against seven of the King’s men or his life will be forfeit. But how will a lowly hedge knight, one who was never even properly knighted by his fallen master, find six men who are strong of sword and will to stand with him against the crown?

This is another solid issue showing Dunk’s failings and strengths, particularly of character. It is his good heart but poor judgment that got him in this predicament in the first place. It is that same heart that he must count on to draw six other good men to his side to fight for his life for the crime of striking a mad prince who, for his part, was prepared to do terrible things to an innocent woman.

Most of this issue is concerned with Dunk’s efforts to find comrades, and the fact that they are willing to fight with him says as much about their character as it does about Dunk’s own. The issue sets up the massive Trial of Seven, which promises to be the showcase of the next, final issue in the miniseries.

Mike S. Miller deserves to be a comic book superstar. He and Mike Crowell do a beautiful job with this issue, with almost no action to speak of. This is, in many instances, a talking heads issue, but the visuals are never dull. The dour look on Dunk’s face as the weight of his situation sinks in… beautiful scenes in the rain… designs for armor that get more and more inventive. Along with Team Kandora doing the color work, each page of this comic really is a work of art.

This has been a heartily satisfying fantasy series from the outset. There’s plenty more stories to tell in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, from which this is adapted – I hope DB Pro gets to keep doing it.

Rating: 8/10

The Hedge Knight #4

March 13, 2004

Quick Rating: Very Good

Ser Dunk steps to Tanselle’s defense… but what will the consequence be?

Writers: George R.R. Martin & Ben Avery
Pencils: Mike S. Miller
Inks: Mike Crowell
Colors: Lynx Studio
Letters: Bill Tortolini
Editor: Robert Silverberg
Cover Art: Mike S. Miller (Cover A); Tom Yeates (Cover B)
Publisher: Devil’s Due/DB Pro

After a five-month gap between Hedge Knight #2 and #3, this issue comes out after only a couple of weeks. Also, Roaring Studios jumps ship from Image Comics, changes its name to DB Pro and lands with another company that recently left the big “I,” Devil’s Due. Fortunately, you don’t need to know any of that to understand the story, which is still quite good.

Dunk is awaiting the next day of the great tournament and pondering who to challenge in combat when his squire, Egg, tells him the puppeteer his is smitten with is being attacked by none other than Prince Aerion. Dunk’s heart overtakes his head and he winds up in serious trouble. George R.R. Martin and Ben Avery start throwing in some great twists in this issue that most readers won’t see coming (unless, like myself, they read the novella this miniseries is adapting), and we see real compassion and heroism out of Dunk. In the relatively short time since the beginning of this series (for the characters, I mean), he has evolved a great deal as a character.

I’m going to keep saying how great an artist Mike S. Miller is until comic book companies start fighting over him like he deserves. Unlike so many artists, he finds ways to give each major character a distinctive face of his or her own, setting them apart from each other. The only flaw, artwise, in the entire issue is a bit of awkward layout on the second-to-last page where the panels don’t quite flow in the proper direction – the reader doesn’t know that he’ll have to backtrack and the conversation suddenly stops making sense because you’re reading the panels in the wrong order. For someone usually so good at storytelling, I was surprised at the flaw.

Lynx Studio, as usual, is incredibly strong in the coloring department – deep reds for the sunset scenes, blues and blacks at night, brown for the flashback sequences and dancing flame effects – every page of this comic looks beautiful, not to mention a fantastic cover by Miller that shows skill at painting as well. (I don’t mean to slight to the alternate cover by Tom Yeates, I just haven’t seen it.)

Fans of fantasy and Martin should be checking out this series. A collected edition of issues 1-3 just came out, so it’s easy to jump on board for the last three issues. With CrossGen pulling the plug on Meridian and Scion, this is one of the best fantasy comics on the market.

Rating: 8/10

The Imaginaries (2005 Series) #1

April 16, 2005

Quick Rating: Great
Title: Lost and Found Part One

Where does an imaginary friend go when a child no longer needs him?

Writers: Ben Avery & Mike S. Miller
Pencils: Mike S. Miller & Greg Titus
Colors: Lynx Studio & Greg Titus
Letters: Bill Tortolini
Editor: Mike S. Miller
Cover Art: Mike S. Miller (Cover A); Greg Titus (Cover B)
Publisher: Image Comics/Alias Enterprises/DB Pro

A few weeks ago I reviewed another Mike Miller/Alias Enterprises comic, Lullaby: Wisdom Seeker, which was a great combination of classic children’s books. With this second Alias production, this new studio is really poising itself to be a leader in all-ages comic books. This is one of the best new comics I have read in a very long time, and like Lullaby, it’s one that adults can read, appreciate, and then share with their children.

To cope with his parents’ marital troubles, a young boy named Tanner takes up the adventures of Superhero G, a character his father dreamt about as a child. When he grows older, though, and life gets harder, Tanner abandons the hero. Superhero G then finds himself in another world, stranded on the outskirts of a great walled city in the midst of an unforgiving desert. He has been sent to the Imagined Nation, home of imaginary friends that children no longer dream about, and unless he finds a way into the city, he will soon be no more.

I am a sucker, I will admit, for stories about the power of imagination, and this is one of the best such stories I’ve come across. While the story is about a child growing older, for a younger child it will reinforce the power of their own creations, make them more real rather than less.

Miller and Titus do an equally strong job with the artwork. The “real” world looks like the sort of art style you’d find in a strong superhero comic, which is interesting since the superhero doesn’t show up at all. We also get a few pages in a child’s crayon style before moving on to the “imaginary” world, where the art makes a minor shift. While the shift isn’t so drastic as to be jarring, things do become a little more cartoonish, and not just because we’re faced with living snowmen and talking bunny rabbits. Body structures become more exaggerated, faces elongated, and we feel like we’ve fallen into a Saturday morning cartoon or – more appropriately – the imagination of a particularly vivid child.

Is it fair to say that, with just one issue, I’m in love with this book? I think so. This is the kind of stuff that I just eat up, and if you’ve got kids that you want to bring into the world of comics, Alias Enterprises now has not one, but two fantastic entry-level comic books. Check this out.

Rating: 9/10

Lullaby: Wisdom Seeker #1

March 25, 2005

Quick Rating: Very Good

To protect Wonderland, Alice sets out to the other realms of the imagination.

Writers: Mike S. Miller & Ben Avery
Art: Hector Sevilla
Colors: Simon Bork, David Curiel & Ulises Arreola
Letters: Bill Tortolini
Editor: Mike S. Miller
Cover Art: Hector Sevilla
Publisher: Image Comics/Alias Enterprises/DB Pro

This book really succeeded for me. It’s a fabulous mixture of fairy tales and great children’s literature, a sort of younger cousin to the likes of Fables or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, throwing together all of the fantastic characters we read about as children into one book together.

Alice is a young girl from another world who was mysteriously transported to Wonderland and raised until she was the right hand of the Queen of Hearts. As a war hero, Alice is much beloved, but troubled by dreams of her former life, and by words of disturbances in neighboring fairylands. She sets out to travel from land to land to find the truth behind the disturbance.

In a neighboring land, a young pirate lad named Jim Hawkins is tossed from his ship by a captain who fears he’ll one day take command away from him. Jim and his mate,, a little wooden boy who once was human, decide to set out on an adventure of their own.

This issue is largely set-up. We’re introduced to many of our main characters and many of the fantastic settings this title will use, but things aren’t brought together yet. Alice is on her own, and while Jim and Pinocchio are together, they’re all worlds apart.

I love children’s fantasy. I think the worlds of L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll are among the richest and most incredible ever dreamed by the human mind, and it’s incredibly exciting for me to see all of them pulled together in a title that’s written this well.

And the art, by creator Hector Sevilla is absolutely outstanding. There is a little of a Manga feel to it, particularly in the clothing designs, but it’s not so much as to turn off someone who doesn’t care for that style. Mostly, it’s just a very well-drawn, well-designed and beautifully colored fantasy comic book.

I picked this up because, as I said, I love children’s fantasy, and because I’ve become quite a fan of Mike Miller. I’m not disappointed in the least. This gives me a lot of hope for Alias’s future projects, both through Image and on their own.

Rating: 8/10