Karman Blade #2 // Review
Ages ago, there was one who was known as the False King. He wheeled a blade that had been forged in the heavens themselves. He was leading his men into battle. A powerful being known as Kalu offered him a deal: surrender his sword, and he would be able to return to his wife and family in peace. Continue with the aggression and he would lose his family. It's not an easy choice, but it's already been made in The Karman Blade #2. Writer Darcy Van Poelgeest continues an epic fantasy story with artist Ian Bertram.
The False King took Kalu up on his offer. He considered himself husband and father first. King 2nd. Of course, there are always going to be problems where being a great power rule over everything. And as a result, he may have gotten his family back, but he lost his nation. And ultimately, his family due to the starvation that comes with having lost a war. All of this is ancient history, though. A young boy has found a blade. And now the fate of the entire kingdom rests in the hands of someone with very little experience. The blade has shown the boy the future. There may be hope yet.
Darcy Van Poelgeest stage is epic fantasy with a true sense of overwhelming intensity. There's a great deal of poetry in a basic set up. A child with nothing to lose whose magical sword has given him visions of the future is possibly the kingdom's last hope. There's a real sense of ridiculously overwhelming desperation that drives the story forward into it the end of its first hal it's very sharply rendered stuff. The author manages to hold onto a very serious and solemn mood that never self-consciously lapses into any kind of awkward attempt at comic relief. It's remarkably pure epic fantasy.
Bertram delivers a very distinctly envisioned fantasy world to the page. The art style is so distinctive that it instantly transports the reader into someplace else. There's a coolness and an aesthetically appealing aspect to what's being presented on the page. But beyond that there's also a wild eyed sense of desperation that interacts with the script quite well. It's all delivered to the page with a very distinctive visual fingerprint that carries its own kind of power through a particularly compelling narrative.
In the world of contemporary sword and sorcery fantasy, it takes a hell of a lot of guts to deliver a story so completely devoid of any kind of humor that is also relentlessly dark. It runs the risk of being a parody of itself. However, the entire creative team does such a good job of delivering the proper intensity. It feels pure. It feels dark. And it feels like a perfect realization of a very classic and classic dark sort of epic heroes journey. It's not something that's attempted as much in the modern age as one might think. Contemporary fantasy has a tendency to be very self-conscious and wait itself very carefully on the page. Krman Blade is heroically, unflinchingly dark.
