Independent Propaganda

JESTERCROW: THE HUNT TPB

Created and written by Michael Angelos with art by Ryan Sergeant, Scott Lee, and Stephen Sadowski

Price: $12.95

Castle Rain Entertainment

Originally published as 3 issues from 2000–2001 with new material from 2006

Reviewed by David Lamontagne / writer for Independent Propaganda

Review:

You remember in the movie REAL MEN when the CIA guy says, “Average, maybe a little less”? There’s a reason I’m bringing it up.

JESTERCROW takes place on the world of Zerra Mia, the hundreds of races of which have aligned themselves into blocs with names like The Quindarin Hierarchy, Wev Alliance, The Kelephant Clan, and The Independent Tribes of the Enchantment Realm. The story follows Jester, a Ves’da’va Crow, which is basically a Jedi who can teleport and doesn’t have to wear a cloak. Jester is betrayed by his fellow Crow, Nester, and their students, who aren’t Crows. I don’t think they’re even the same species. It’s a little hard to tell, because, although all of the characters look different, they’re all different in the same way, like goths. THE HUNT is the first volume of an ongoing story, and lovers of closure will meet with consternation at the trade’s end.

I don’t like to give the plot away, but I don’t think I’m revealing a surprise when I say that Jester has an inevitable and inconclusive rematch with Nester when they’re bafflingly teamed on a mission to find the all-powerful Zoev Staff, a McGuffin whose mystery is exceeded only by its power, just like the Continuum Transfunctioner. To this end, there are lots of blurrily illustrated, drawn-out, confusing fights inserted at regular intervals to keep the action up, because lord knows you can’t have an exciting story without shirtless supermen beating the hell out of each other on a regular basis, say once per issue. No, that’s not fair. Sometimes they wear shirts. Also, there’s political intrigue consisting of people yelling at each other.

Like a CrossGen comic, it’s a run-of-the-mill superhero story wrapped in the trappings of fantasy. Characterization is underdeveloped and the plot exists only to serve up one fight per issue. So it’s like a modern CONAN, if Conan wore a cape.

The background of the story is suitably epic and feels a little bit like FINDER in the creatures that populate Zerra Mia. Clearly the milieu was created with an eye for infinite variety in locales, monsters, and men. It feels a little bit like a campaign setting for a fantasy role-playing game, which is good, because RPGs are designed to stimulate engaging, diverse stories. Unfortunately, most of the world design doesn’t show in JESTERCROW, except in the prologue, which is superfluous in that it provides information that the reader gets in the next 70 pages anyway. Most of the action takes place in a few poorly identified locations and involves a small number of people who pop up again and again. In fact, many of the panels don’t place the action anywhere; they just feature a character on a plain white background or a white background filled with swoosh lines if the character is fighting someone. The lack of specificity pervades the storytelling and makes it difficult for the reader to interact with the story. As for the art, it’s in the Caliber style of scratchy lines and vague depictions of anatomy.

Furthermore, logical gaps in the narrative make it seem that all of the volume’s artists suffer from a malady that has caused them to drop every third panel of art, so the story jerks along confusedly, although the flow improves in the last issue in the book. I assume this is a GRENDEL-esque experimental storytelling technique, presumably used to give the title a fast-paced, hyper-kinetic feel in spots of tension and to replicate visually Jester’s moral uncertainty throughout. While laudable in the attempt, it doesn’t really succeed; it just makes the comic hard to follow. On the other hand, Angelos’s dialogue skills are reasonably good and wouldn’t seem out of place in, for example, an Image comic. In fact, I think his writing skills, though unpolished, may show some promise for better JESTERCROW stories in the future.

JESTERCROW: THE HUNT is less than average. I didn’t like it, but a lot of people probably would like it fine. If you’ve been thinking that you’d have liked CrossGen if it had been just a bit edgier, then this is for you. I can’t recommend this comic for fans of fantasy, because it’s not fantasy, but I can recommend it for superhero fans who wouldn’t mind a pretty standard story set in a sort of cool fantasy world.

About the reviewer: David Lamontagne is a freelance writer in Orlando. You can check out his web site by going here.

Technorati Tags: Jestercrow, Castle Rain Entertainment, fantasy