Barbaric #2 // Review
The Black Knight faces the barbarian. They’re about to enter battle with each other. Before they can do so, however...their weapons need to taunt each other. The flail of The Black Knight has a few words for the barbarian’s battle axe. THEN they can engage in combat. It’s pretty childish, but maturity isn’t exactly the domain of an enchanted weapon. Such is the state of things in Barbaric #2. Writer Micheal Moreci and artist Nathan Gooden continue to march to the big showdown for the latest story in their sword and sorcery fantasy universe in an issue featuring some very sophisticated color work by Fabiana Marques.
The barbarian is trying to level with The Black Knight. He knows that they’re both cursed. It’s...unfortunate, but that doesn’t mean that they have to kill each other. Of course...if The Black Knight is listening to him at all, he wouldn’t know. The Black Knight’s flail is a lot more talkative than he is. There sure as hell isn’t any reasoning with an enchanted weapon that only really wants to kill. That doesn’t mean that the barbarian isn’t going to try to get through to him. Chance and circumstance may prove to have a different direction than either combatant (or either of their weapons) are expecting...
Moreci employs contemporary language in a sword and sorcery fantasy story. It’s something that’s almost never done well when it IS done and it’s rarely appealing when it is. To Moreci’s credit...he’s got a strong sense of wit, rhythm and gutter poetry that feels strong enough to overcome the problems that often go along with contemporary-style dialogue in a high fantasy setting. The plot is appealingly irreverent. There’s some complexity to the plot that engages the central conflicts that are present in the foreground.
The art is reasonably well-integrated with the script. Gooden’s art is highly-detailed in a way that doesn’t crowd-out the page. As a result, action sweeps swiftly across the page. There s some level of drama that resonates across the page beyond the surface aggressons. That drama is brought to the page with some degree of complexity by Gooden. Marques’ colors do an impressive job of developing depth and radiance that work quite well in the context of everything that’s going on in and amidst the adventure. It’s all quite well-articulated on quite a few visual levels.
There’s a great sense of rhythm rolling through the issue that continues to build on the momentum from the first issue of the current series. Moreci continues to tell a solidly entertaining story featuring a. reasonably relatable sword and sorcery fantasy lead. The general emotional frictions and frustrations of Owen the Barbarian feel quite cleverly earthbound in another satisfying trip to a rather strangely skewed fantasy adventure story. There may not be a whole lot of depth beyond the surface of the story, but there’s more than enough in the issue to keep the pages moving swiftly.
