Arndt, Christopher; Minier, Aaron; Peat, Brandon – Black Rose #1

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Black Rose #1

It’s not even remotely fair to bring this up during my reviews of the first issues of ongoing series, but at this point I want to see more before I get too sucked in. Don’t get me wrong, this issue did just about everything you need to do to get me interested in a series. There’s the opening, set two weeks before the start of the story that’s told throughout the rest of the book, which already promises a bad end for our hero. We get to see a negotiation between a large army and a terrified smaller town, in which we learn plenty about the motivations of both. There’s a long conversation between members of this army in some quiet time between battles, which is essential to get to know these people and what they’re trying to do. There are also tantalizing hints of the enemy, as well as the fact that we’re still not sure which side is the “bad guys.” And no misspellings that I could see, which shouldn’t be so rare as to warrant praise, but it is what it is. So yeah, every aspect of this makes up a successful and compelling first issue, but I just have to be the cynic who wonders if we’ll ever see the last issue of this six issue series. It’s not fair, it assigns blame to this crew for mistakes that countless other comics creators/publishers have made in the past, and I’m going to stop going on about it right now and will instead just hope that I see a couple more issues of this available by SPACE 2014. If you’re looking for an intriguing fantasy series, this is definitely worth a look. It’s made clear in the afterword that this has been planned out for years, and I just looked at their website and saw that the whole series is already available, so forget everything I just said. Sure, I could delete it and start over, but I prefer to be caught in the act of being too cynical for my own damned good. Now that I know the whole thing is already out there I’m really curious to see what happens next… $3