The Last God: Book One of the Fellspyre Chronicles #1-3 by writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson and artist Riccardo Federici, from DC's Black Label.

If you think the Black Label is all about the Batmember or grim and gritty versions of super-heroes, well, you'd be wrong. The Last God is a dark epic fantasy book.

If you've not heard of it, take a quick look at this-DC produced a trailer for it to hype the launch of the series, a 12 issue maxi-series.



andhere's a look at the back cover of the comicwhich like any good prose fantasy gives ou an overview of what to expect inside..



It's a story set in a fantasy world-fairly well developed with a lot of world-building by the author as seen in the back matter of each issue-that feels like one you might find in a series of fantasy novels or a D&D campaign setting; you can definitely see the acknowledged influence of Tolkien here, but it's not a Middle-Earth ripoff. One of the unique back matter elements I quite liked is that Johnson is a musician as well as a writer and he has developed folk songs about the world, songs you see characters singing in the story but then offers ersatz scholarly examinations of the song by sages in the back matter revealing a lot about the world's culture and folklore as well as offering insight into the conflict which drives the story.

About that conflict-this is a world that has had a period of "peace" for 30 years, resulting from a fellowship of heroes defeating and killing a Dark God and emerging as the elders of the various nations and organizations of the world. Except they harbor a dark secret-they actually failed in their quest and only delayed the dark god's plans not destroyed them or him. And in a celebration honoring the anniversary of their achievement 30 years alter, the Dark God makes his move. That is pretty much the set up of the first issue, and issues 2 and 3 move the story forward but also intersperse scenes from the past showing what happened with the first fellowship.

Three issues in and we're still learning about the characters (there's a lot of them but each is getting developed so it doesn't feel decompressed). We learn about the threat of the Last God 30 years ago and how the heroes rose to try to face it, but we also see how flawed these heroes were. We see the dark god's schemes move forward in his return-he is a god of death, rot and ruin, and he unleashes a plague-like curse that turns those infected into undead rotting plant creatures (for lack of a better term) to spread his influence over the world. It is a pretty standard plot for epic fantasy, but in these things it's about execution not just about high concept-lots of high concept fantasies fail because they are poorly executed while some who have more standard concepts excel because they are executed brilliantly.

Johnson is unfolding a tale that is interesting and uses back matter to enhance the appeal of the story, not drown it in details that subsume the story itself. That is a delicate balance to achieve in epic or dark fantasy and Johnson so far has done well with it.

Federici's art is outstanding. It takes the mood, tone and aesthetics of current fantasy art (seen in iterations of D&D, Pathfinder, and other fantasy RPGs both tabletop and videogames) and executes it with an excellent grasp of visual storytelling needed for a successful comics. He faces a challenge of telling a story set in two eras simultaneously and making the characters of different eras be recognizable as older/younger versions of themselves but also be distinguishable and unique to differentiate the visuals of each era, and having to make the the world of each era feel like the same world separated by time and developments, and he succeeds well.

Here's a sample 2 page sequence form issue #1, early in the story-the aged king and queen (two heroes of the original fellowship) sit on their thrones watching a gladiatorial games in honor of the anniversary celebration. One of the gladiatorial slaves plays the role of the king on the quest while his opponents play the opponents he faced...and while they watch each slips into the reverie of memory giving the readers a first glimpse of the dark secrets they hold...



Here's the next page...



each individual character has their own look, their facial expressions and body language reveal a lot of the inner turmoil going on, and each looks like a real person of a certain age or body type (the two figures to the back and left in the first panel are of different races than human (dwarf and elf analogues) and have distinctive characteristics that separate them from the humans around them without devolving into the standard elf/dwarf visual tropes.

And here's a page depicting some of those characters in the past on the fellowship's quest 30 years before...



the woman, Cyanthe, in the last panel is the aged queen sitting on the throne in the previous pages-recognizable as the same person but realistically aged/de-aged. That's quite a feat for a visual artist, especially in the comics book arena where faces under the mask are often generic and indistinct form one another following certain visual tropes.

It is a dark fantasy though, and there are horror/horrific elements to it, and these elements are also drawn with aplomb by Federici...




Like any good modern fantasy effort, it comes with a map...



which is really well done and would stand out as a quality map in any tabletop rpg supplement.


So I would say if you like dark or epic fantasy, or are just looking for a well done comic outside the super-hero genre, this is worth taking a look at. It's set to run 12 issues, but is also labelled as book 1, so I could see further series following up on it if it is successful (as almost every fantasy book series does these days).

-M

X- Force #1 through #4 (2019)

X- Men #1 through #4 (2019)

Today I read Invisible Kingdom... G Willow Wilson's book from Berger Books. Pretty good start.. I hope it gets enough time to start develop the story she plans on telling. My favorite part was I was thinking throughout the ship looked like the Bebop, and then in the end notes they call it 'a mash up of Dune and Cowboy Bebop'.. made me very happy.

The art was a little weird... very computer generated, and they did a weird thing were the art often was cut off as if there's more outside the book... I didn't like that. Pretty cool character designs though.

Definitely the concept of Space Amazon teaming up with Space Monks who take a vow of poverty to control the universe is a story that has all sorts of potential.

Savage Wolverine #4. I'm not sure why Shanna has blonde hair and painted nails but hey. The Cho art reminds me that I still have his Skybourne comic to read later.

First issue of The Last God was a pretty good read. Tough thing on a new fantasy series is to get out of the shadow of things like LOTR and now Game of Thrones. Artwork and the format for the book was top notch.

I hadn't read any Ms. Marvel since G Willow Wilson left, so I checked out an issue... said it was an Iron Man cross over on the cover, which I thought would be neat with all the crazy stuff in Iron Man.

Sadly, what it was in fact was an epilogue to the 5 part story that just completed so that it can be a 6 issue trade.. the Iron Man part happened on the last two pages, and had no connection to anything going on there, and in fact, didn't even make sense. Definitely disappointing, but the story that it's the epilogue to sounded fun, so I might get said trade at some point, so that's a plus.

Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez.

Well, that was excellent. The upcoming Netflix series better do the source material justice.