Lost Fantasy #7 // Review
It’s a tiny outpost in snow-covered Subarctia. The snow is faling thick and heavy outside the Great Northern Hotel. A one-eyed man enters the establishment. Hair as white as the falling snow. Everything he wears s black from his eyepatch on down. He’s looking for someone who keeps a P.O.Box at the hotel. Number 5150. The man behind the counter isn’t in the habit of giving out information about guests. The one-eyed man is going to have some difficulty in Lost Fantasy #7. The writing team of Curt Pires and Franklin Jonas continue their adventure fantasy saga with artist Luca Casalanguida. Color comes to the page courtesy of Mark Dale.
The one-eyed man explains that he wasn’t asking for information. The implication is that he was demanding. He IS, after all, there on behalf of House Blackheart. The individual in question is in posession of critical information leading to an ongoing investigation. The individual in question IS, however, just as dangerous as House Blackheart, so the one-eyed man isn’t exactly in a position to bargain. Thankfully any further immediate conflict will be avoided as the individual in question agrees to meet with the one-eyed man...if he can get to him across the snowy drifts to meet with him.
Of course...going across the drifts is a dangerous undertaking that’s going to find the hero awash in memories of some of the events in his distant past that ultimately led him to seek the gentleman in question. Pires and Jonas swirl around the backstory of the narrative in a dizzying display that reveals quite a bit about what has gone on before, allowing some considerable insight into what’s been going on in the series thus far. It’s a powerful chapter in the saga that moves conflicts forward with some pretty dynamic narrative momentum.
Casalanguida and Dale make quite an impression on the page just conjuring the snow and cold of the wastes. The specific lines and nuances of the drama might not necessarily make much of an impression on the page, but the overall intensity of the nature that’s hitting the page is so deliciously overwhelming that it scarcely seems to matter. Everything is hitting the page with just the right amount of impact from beginning to end. It might not have a tight sense of execution on the page, but the powerful impact of everything in the story keeps the pages turning from cover to cover.
Things seem to be rolling in an interesting direction as the issue reaches its end. The central conflicts of the story feel like they’ve come so very, very close to being addressed. There’s a big cclimax that appears to be ready to explode across te page in the eighth issue which just might reveal everything that’s needed for a satisfying end to the central conflict, but it is so very, very difficult to tell whether or not it’s really going to come together. Time will tell.
