Arcana Royale #1 // Review
Hudson Tremaine is practicing the game in a shabby, little room. A few folding chairs sit around a card table not far from a shabby, little bed. Her suitcase is moving. It’s jiggling. A little demon crawls out of the thing holding an invitation. It’s delivered its message, so she has no problem stepping on the thing and crushing it with her foot. Hudson might be bin over her head in Arcana Royale #1. Writer Culen Bunn firmly establishes a very cool protagonist in the opening chapter of s series featuring art by A.C. Zamudio with color by Bill Crabtree. It’s a sharp opening to a promising, new four-part series.
Those who contacted her originally weren’t entirely confident that she was taking the game seriously. The thing about Hudson, though? The only way she can take ANYTHING seriously is by NOT taking it seriously. And so if she’s going to save the world, she’s going to have to do it her way. (Oh yeah: it’s an ancient card game with powerful forces. The winner can manipulate reality in whatever way they want...so maybe the winner becomes God or something like that. It doesn’t matter to Hudson, though. What matters to her is the game...
Bunn’s basic concept is actually quite brilliant and quite unlike anything else that’s making it the current comic book rack. The basic premise is very, very cool. The pacing is brilliant. The overall backstory slides-in around the edges of everything else with a cool shadow that feels infinitely stylish. On top of all of that, Hudson is just a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with. She seems invincible in her own way until a giant sock monkey beats the hell out of her towards the end of the first issue. So y’know...it’w weird, too, which is also a lot of fun.
Zamudio carves stylish visuals out of haven darkness and fairly overwhelming shadow. Zamudio has conjured-up the perfect kind of beauty for Hudson. She’s young, confident and flashy with a red and black color scheme and the ever-present cigarette of a chain-smoking card shark. You can just smell the sickly sweet nicotine death coming off of every page...likely mixed with some kind of cheap perfume and the smell of Curaçao Liqueur. Crabtree’s colors hit the page with a potent impact that feels kind of cooly overwhelming in its own way. The color palette feels suitably dark as well with more than a bit of flair here and here around the edges of everything.
It’s already a quarter of the way over. Hudson only just walked-in and already she’s one quarter of the way out the door. It’s...disconcerting. She’s so much fun on the comics page that it’s really too bad that she’s only got three issues left. Of course....this is only the impression after the first issue. Things could theoretically fall into some rough terrain in the course of the last three chapters, but the first issue feel fairly brilliant.
