Archon: Battle of the Dragon #1
Written by John J. Perez
Art by Marco Maccagni
Action Lab Entertainment
Where to start on this one; hmmmm, OK let’s talk the art by Marco Maccagni. He serves up a more cartoon-flavoured artwork here, which is just right for a story skirting the line of seriousness and tongue-in-cheek storytelling employed here.
Maccagni’s style is great in the scenes with the stereotypical teens playing Dungeons & Dragons, and yet remains bang on with the pretty nymph, weird trolls and overly boisterous dragon.
By now you might be thinking sword and sorcery tale by writer John J. Perez, which is partly correct.
But this one has a twist.
The creatures of fantasy are alive and well, populating a massive theme-casino and hotel complex in Vegas. That’s a quirky enough storyline to draw my interest.
The interaction of these fantastical denizens with the human populace outside the complex is going to be the heart of the storyline, as the main character, a new head of security discovers what he is actually now involved with, and I suspect that his own background is not what he thinks it is.
I really enjoyed issue #1. This one that might pass under a lot of people’s radars, but it is definitely worth a read.
Johnny Red #1
Writer by Garth Ennis
Art by Keith Burns
Titan Comics
A rich guy buys a wrecked old WWII airplane. He wants more than it restored, he wants its story.
As a vehicle to tell a war story it works about as well as any.
In the case of Johnny Red #1 writer Garth Ennis takes that handy little plot driver, and quickly gets us into the skies over Russia.
In particular the skies over Stalingrad, where a rather ragtag bunch of pilots try to shepherd supply planes trying to drop supplies to the beleaguered city.
The strange thing is we find a British aircraft, and a British pilot part of the force.
It’s an intriguing story, and one which took only a few pages to completely hook me.
That of course was helped by the art of Keith Burns, which has lots of detail, but still is not so overly realistic that you forget you are reading a comic.
Since this is a story of the air war, the dogfights in the skies are a huge part of the appeal, and they are frankly breathtaking here. They alone are worth the price of this one.
Just mark this one as a must have, and enjoy.
