Comic Review - Elric #11

            I have not read the preceding ten issues of Elric: The Balance Lost by Chris Roberson and Francesco Biagini.  However, I do love a good sword and sorcery book and if this issue really struck a chord with me, I was considering searching out the rest of the series.  While the book had some high points, it was also fairly boring and, at times, I found myself struggling to even want to finish it.  But I did, and here’s what I think.

Cover:

            Of course this book has three covers.  Didn’t you know that we are in a time warp back to the 90s where every comic has to have three to four covers, even though collectors are far less likely to pay for variant covers if each issue is $3.99 as opposed to the $1.50 they were in the 90s.  Regardless, I picked up the Dan Panosian cover as that was the first one on the rack.  It is a decent cover, that definitely makes good use of the featured character’s white skin for artistic effect.  While I understand that in order to make that design technique work, nothing else can be as light as that character (and nothing is), that does not prevent the colorist from mixing things up a little, you know, making everything a color other than brown.  The fact that there is an awful lot going on in the cover could have been a good thing if it had been colored to highlight some of that, or at the very least ensure that it was not a giant mess.

4/10 – It was ok, the illustration was nice and it kind of had something to do with the actual story.  The coloring really killed this for me though. 

Story:

            While it was not too hard to follow the story from the get-go (even though this was issue 11) I have a feeling that that is more because of the simplicity of the story itself than the fact that the between-issue transition was written well.  It’s basically good versus evil so that made the whole thing kind of generic, regardless of what little twists Roberson tried to throw in there.  There were a couple instances that I just shook my head at (which is never good, regardless of the media that you are using).  There was an interesting few pages where two of the characters revealed that they both had their love interest killed by a relative.  Ok, that’s fine in terms of a plot device to unite the heroes I guess, however it just felt so clumsy in its execution.  “bad guy relative killed my girlfriend” “I too lost a girlfriend to a bad guy relative”.  That just sounds like something you would expect from a middle school creative writing class, not someone that is a professional writer.

            Another instance is when the four main characters claim that they are the “four who are one”.  Now not everyone will understand this reference but that is generally what KISS refers to themselves as.  Now this comic is based on the novels by Michael Moorcock that debuted in 1961 (thank you Wikipedia).  I did not see any reference on the page to the “four who are one” though.  It is entirely possible that KISS adopted the phrase to serve their purposes, so I won’t come down too hard on Roberson for that as he is probably just referencing the content of the books, but if not it just sounds weird to me and any other KISS fan I am sure.

            There was an instance toward the end of the book where one character has to fight someone else.  His words, and I quote “You want to do this?  Let’s do this.”  Really, I’m not making that shit up.  That is just lame and downright lazy writing.  You’re telling me you couldn’t come up with a better phrase than that?  Really?

2/10 – The story, while clear, really doesn’t do much in terms of engaging the reader.  Maybe it’s a better read if you have already invested in the previous ten issues, but I find that hard to believe. 

 Art:

            At least the art is good.  I do enjoy the intricate details that he puts into the background and costume elements.  The monster designs are very interesting as well.  

Very cool monster

Full shot of the monster, interesting design, the panel border that it is breaking is kind of ridiculous but the monster design is very well done

They are not standard looking monsters and have a more thought-out feel to their design and kind of look like something out of a Guillermo Del Torro wet dream, which is pretty cool.  The people all look pretty similar though, to the point where if they did not have different clothing on I would be unable to tell who was who. 

Ok, I get it, you are a fancy panel border master.

This just borders on absurd.

            My final complaint about the art is the panel borders.  Too many times Biagini uses what he probably deems to be “creative” panel borders.  Now I am fine with mixing it up every once in awhile but the constant use of gimmicks such as this, along with oddly shaped panels tell me that you are either trying to hard to be “artsy” or that you are overcompensating for a lack of storytelling ability.  The storytelling is ok, nothing groundbreaking, but ok; so I have to assume that Biagini is trying to do too much.  Time to reign that in as it is distracting and unattractive if it is repeated throughout the book.

6/10 – The art was undoubtedly the best part of the book.  It unfortunately was not good enough to carry a sub-par story though.

4/10 – It’s not the worst book I have read but probably only something to be picked up by die-hard fans of the creators or of Elric himself.