Maleficent #5 // Review
The long-dead warrior stands defiant against a powerful mistress of evil. He’s valiant, but he hasn’t exactly got a whole lot to lose. (He IS dead after all.) She seems to have the upper hand. The skeletal warrior doesn’t hold much of a defense against a woman capable of wielding vast magics. He’s not alone in his opposition of the mistress, though. There are others who would stand to gain much from her. downfall in Maleficent #5. Writer Paulina Ganucheau and artist Theo Stultz conclude their Sleeping Beauty prequel with style and poise that feels strikingly well-rendered both conceptually and visually.
Maleficent is about to strike down her opponents when certain other magics are drawn against her. She is trapped in a ribbon of blue energy which tightens around her entire body in various places. So she's trapped. However, even with a very long time to prepare for the showdown, her opponents are still very much in danger of having incurred the wrath of someone who stands to gain even more power if she can defeat them. And the fact that she's only mildly amused at her own incarceration is a bit disconcerting under the circumstances.
Ganuchaeu balances things quite well in the final issue of the series. It would be all too easy to jump through a great deal of world building in a series like this. So a little of the world of.Sleeping Beauty had been a sport in the original movie. And there hadn't really been a whole lot done in the world of the series since then. Thankfully, the writer decided to limit it to a very powerful and very profoundly simple conflict, which come to bear here at the end of this particular prequel in a way that feels delightfully, simple, and primal.
Stultz’s sketchiness feels stylish enough. It almost feels like an impressionistic interpretation of a style of animation that have been developed for the original movie. Ganuchaue herself does the work on the cover that feels a lot more like a straight, high Fidelity interpretation of the visuals from that original movie. There is something pleasantly haunting about the way that Stultz brings the story to the page, though. All of the basic elements are there and there is a profound sense of mystical drama that's being delivered to the page. The details might feel a little fuzzy and distinct in places, but and it's pretty remarkable stuff.
Ganucheau has done such a good job with this series. It would be really nice to see her try to frame some other fairytale drama for the page in a similar fashion. She's working with very basic archetypes of good and evil, but doing so in a way that feels provocative enough to carry more weight than it really should. After all, it's just good versus evil, right? But the writer has done a really good job of frame getting away that feels like his addressing more than an old story of magic and malice.
