Lost Fantasy #8 // Review
Two men wield ridiculously large swords in a snowstorm. It really looks like a single swipe of either sword could cut clear through either of the two men wielding them. The twin swords look like they’re taller and heavier than the men wielding them. The winds pick-up in the snowstorm. The one with an eyepatch demands to know where his father is. The one in the red hood tells him that the man that he’s looking for...is not his father. Thus begins Lost Fantasy #8. Writer Curt Pires and artist Luca Casalanguida continue their dark fantasy saga as certain revelations hit the page. A plot arc draws to a close in a well-constructed eighth issue.
Henry might be attacking his opponent, but it’s not like he’s unwilling to listen to a man who claims to be a brother of a sort. He’s tired anyway. He’s getting slopy. A continued offensive just mean his own death, so he’s going to listen to the man who claims to have information that just might be of interest to him. It’s a story from the past. It’s a story from just after a magic civil war. It’s a tale of bloodshed which resonates the the snow and cold of a desolate evening.
Pires has a lot of backstory to cover in an issue the centers largely around a single conflict between two guys with big swords. It’s a bit of a strange combination of things. And it's an opportunity to go over a whole lot of lore in this series before moving onto the next major plot arc. It's not exactly the most graceful way to get across the backstory. But it's interesting stuff. And it does provide a more firm grounding for the rest of the series.
Casalanguida yes, given the opportunity to deliver a great deal of story in a very limited number of panels. So that ends up being a lot of storytelling being told in each of the panels of the story that's being told to Henry. Any one of those panels would serve as a pretty solid initial study for a more complicated and in-depth painting. As silly as it looks, with those huge swords, the fantastic conflict between the two men in the snowstorm has a fairly prominent impact. There's a real visual appeal to seeing these two guys clang the metal together in the snow.
With a little bit of Henry's foundation, firmly established, the creative team on this series can move things forward in a direction that continues to explore some of those strange mix of fantasy and horror that are occupying the page. It may be playing with tropes that have been around forever in sword and sorcery fantasy, but there's a lot going on here that feels like it has its own distinct fingerprint. And it will be interesting to see how they develop that in the months to come. It feels like the series has taken a little while to find its own voice. But it certainly seems to be doing so.
