Lost Fantasy #10 // Review
It’s a set-up but they don’t know it. Not yet. They’re seriosu figures sitting at a big table in a darkened room. There was an assault on all of the great hunters, so naturally there was going to be some kind of a quorum to be called. Things got on about as well as they normally do in a large gathering of people trying to work out what to do in a crissi. Then there’s a tiny sphere. A little metal thing. It blows-up. Things get ugly in Lost Fantasy #10. Writer Curt Pires, scripter Franklin Jonas and artist Luca Casalanguida reach a major turning point in an ongoing series.
Red robed figures appear in the smoke after the explosion. The figure in the center orders the rest to capture any who still draw breath and desecrate the corpses of the dead. Those who have survived and I've been a prison. And they're pretty far from home and they do. It isn't going to be easy, dealing with his latest reversal and their fortunes. Things seem pretty dark. It's really only a matter of time before things turn around, though. There are forces at work, which seem to be acting in their favor.
There might be some element of originality in the overall premise. However, it is so deep into its Eleanor that it's kind of difficult to find much of a genuine interest in it. Jonas’ scripting doesn't do the story and favors. Dialogue has a tendency to feel cloyingly cliché. However, the overall pacing seems to be working in the favor of the script. The slow lead into that opening explosion is brilliantly timed. And there's quite a lot about the personal concerns and interests of the individual members of the ensemble which have little difficulty drawing-in a reader.
There is a hell of a lot of action in this particular issue. And that can be really difficult to articulate on the page and a way that feels coherent. There are decapitations. There are explosions. There's a lot of weird stuff going on. That's just excessively violent. And it could be fun. But it's way too easy to let that sort of thing just rest on the page. I try to find unique and novel ways to bring it to the page is something that Casalanguida seems to be having a great deal of fun doing. Each action sequence seems to have its own pulse and rhythm. And it feels like it's hitting the page way bad feels unique.
There's no questioning, but the plot of the story could be deeply engaging for the right kind of person. The problem is is that it feels so derivative of so much other fantasy that's come before it. It's hard to find a genuine connection with it unless there's something about it that just hits you just right. So much of it feels like a shadow of an echo of something that's coming before.
