D'Orc #5 // Review
He’s half orc, half dwarf and all...naked. (There’s an explanation. Really.) He seems panicked as he enters a small shop in Boarsmire. Naturally, he’s going to disturb anyone inside, but thankfully it’s really just the one woman inside Madam Morrigan’s shop. The little guy is on the run and looking for safety. There’s an angry mob of people outside looking for him. He may have entered the one place that might be more dangerous for him than it is outside in D’Orc #5. Writer/artist Brett Bean continues a thoroughly entertaining fantasy comedy with color work by Jean-François Beaulieu.
D’Orc is handed a towel. He wouldn’t normally enter a place like that naked, but he had just been in a warm pool when things got a little bit carried away and well...he accidentally killed someone really, really important. And now there are a lot of people who are quite upset about that. So D’Orc finds himself in the presence of someone who claims to be able to wield clairvoyance. Sure: she seems to know everything about how he got to be in her shop, but does she know more about his own distant past than he does?
Bean cleverly reveals a bit more about the origins of the title character. Typically this sort of thing can seem dry and uninteresting, but generally necessary for the background of an epic fantasy type of a story. Bean makes the reveal solidly entertaining with a script that manages to be every bit as fun as it is illuminating. It’s quite an accomplishment. Add to that Bean’s distinctively clever pacing, dialogue and comic delivery. Once again: Bean is showing an impressively strong balance in an irrepressibly fun sword and sorcery fantasy comedy. Five issues into the series and Bean is still delivering a refreshingly fun fantasy to the page.
D’Orc is completely vulnerable throughout the issue. This is painfully apparent from the very first panel. And yet...he’s totally comfortable with the situation. There’s a delicate balance between vulnerability, fear and confidence that roll through an issue that features some particularly clever bits of atmospheric rendering and a fun, little visual gag with Madam Morrigan that gets revealed near the end of the issue. There’s a lot going on in and around the edges of the action that feels refreshingly interesting visually. And it’s actually kind of cool to see D’Orc without the trademark hood and shield.
In addition to being genuinely fun and funny, D’Orc has a fun social element to it that’s been fun. It’s just kind of fun to hang out with D’Orc for twenty pages or so a month because he really is a genuinely cool guy. By the end of the issue, the reader has a chance to get to know the title character in a bit more detail as he learns about his own past. Then the rest of the gang shows-up at issue’s end and the narrative launches into its big cliffhanger. Once again: lots of fun.
