Kaya #34 // Review
The Dragon-God is sleeping. Duke Borgo wants the dragon awakened. The thing is huge, though. They’re no larger than its talons. The Dragon-God isn’t exactly going to listen to Borgo or anyone who answers to him. What might be a frustration for Borgo is actually pretty good for the surrounding area, though. The Dragon-God has been consuming every energy source in its path. The real stress exists elsewhere in Kaya #34. Writer/artist Wes Craig continues a sweeping fantay story with colorist Jason Wordie. The issue might feel a bit heavy on exposition in the beginning, but there ARE some interesting moments towards issue’s end.
The system reboots. Then it continues its history of Terra from Emery the Wise. It picks-up the history after the Great War. The Earth had been barren for a thousand years or more. The wizards continued to delve into the deeper mysteries of the universe. In more ccontemporary time, the prince is moving throguh the snow. He and Razel are on the move...trying to evade captur from the Atrians. With any luck, they’ll reach the Oracle to force the prophecy of the Golden One. In the south, Kaya is riding with a circus troupe that just ran into a group of human stowaways...
Craig’s backstory for the world of Kaya is a bit lost in sci-fi and fantasy tropes that don’t really feel anywhere near as interesting as what’s going on in the main story for Kaya and Jin. The two heroes are walking different paths that. seem to echo each other with clever parallels that explore the nature of Craig’s world in a way that’s a lot more interesting than the backstory that he seems determine to grind through. It’s not difficult to understand the desire to get into the basic foundations of the world that the author is creating, but it’s just not as compelling as the drama in the foreground of the series.
Craig contnues to be a dynamic storyteller in the visual. The fantasy world that’s being rendered for hte page continues to be quite interesting as the series progresses. The scenes with Kaya are particularly interesting in an issue that has her questioning the authority of the one in charge of the nomadic circus troupe that she’s following. The drama there is particularly powerful in the way Craig deftly carves it into the page.
There's kind of a huge accomplishment in setting both of the central characters in the series so far apart from each other. The two are in drastically different situations. And yet there's a strong parallel between them, even though there isn't necessarily a strong causal connection between what one character is doing and the other is experiencing. The settings are powerful, contrasted between each other without feeling like too much of an exaggeration of contrast. It really feels like there's a sweeping sense of adventure between the two of them that come from drastically different situations that seem to be very similar. A very sharply rendered adventure.
