Red Roots #3 // Review
The professional killer is almost completely out of his element. The large purple gentleman is asking him if he’s ready to fight. He’s understandably confused. He’s from a perfectly comprehensible world. Now he’s dealing with a world of inhuman humanoids of every shape, size and color. He’s marched through a portal, given a weapon and told to defend himself alongside everyone else in Red Roots #3. Writer/artist Lorenzo De Felici really sets his story rolling in the third issue. It’s a familiar fish-out-of-water fantasy adventure. There have been a million like it. The distinct charm of De Felici’s story really begins to reveal itself in the third issue.
The schoolteacher isn’t faring much better. She’s been literally dragged through the desert. She’s injured. So they take her to the infirmary. She’s understandably confused what with all of the non-human humanoids that are walking around. It doesn’t help that she’s nearsighted. There’s a squid-headed physician there who asks her about it. When she explains the situation, the physician grabs her head and shoots dome sort of painful light into it...with its own eyes. She’s out for a while, but when she rises into consciousness, she’s going to have to help out.There are always more wounded coming-in from the front lines of the war.
De Felici takes the traditional stereotype of fantasy adventure and twists it into something new. Early sci-fi fish-out-of-water adventure finds Earth people transported to an alien world...and whether they’re John Carter or Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or Adam Strange or any of a host of others...there’s something about them that makes them special on that other world. De Felici takes a couple of people and launches them into a fantasyic adventure world where there’s no question at all that they’re nothing special. They’re lost in a bewildering world of danger that isn’t at all glamorous. It’s an appealing approach.
As an artist, De Felici does a really good job of delivering a sense of epic archaic violence and brutality. The basic kinetics of the action feel firmly weighted in a solid sense of animalistic, humanoid aggression. It’s powerful stuff...occasionally amplified by some truly weird stuff. The portal that get everyone to the battlefield is a particularly impressive visual effect. A blackness opens-up and just...suck everyone up and spits them out on the battlefield. Very cool.
De Felici does a fantastic job of making everything seem oppressive and inescapable. In variably there's probably a “chosen one” style revelation that's probably on the horizon at some point. It's inevitable that the heroes are going to have to become at some point. For now, however, De Felici does a whole thing respectable job only making of this foreign fantasy or feel that much more oppressive and ominous than such places so often do. It's starting to feel more like has his own kind of momentum. Its own distinct flavor of fantasy. Is definitely worth a look.
