Enchanted Legends

Legends: The Enchanted #0

Written & Illustrated by Nick Percival
Lettered by Richard Starkings & Comicraft's Jimmy Betancourt
Edited by Renae Geerlings
Published by Radical

This is a special dollar introductory issue for the upcoming original graphic novel from Radical Comics, wherein we meet a motherload of a new world. Horror fantasy, cybernetic blasphemy of the fairy tales we all remember from when we were children, twisted here by the talented mind of Percival. And oh baby is it good.

A dark tale, we meet Jack the Giant-Killer as he finishes up with a pair of brutes, and from there we meet Red Hood as she deals with a pack of werewolves in the woods. But these are not the sweetly youthful heroes of story time, these are adult warriors, beings known as the Enchanted. And they are all about saving the day no matter how brutal things might get along the way. Other familiar characters are shown, teasing the reader with what the GN will likely offer. This is a violent story, undoubtedly, with imagery straight from nightmare. I do though, foresee comparisons being made to Fables, comparisons by folks too dimwitted to actually give this book a read. In which case they would see something far less smarmy, and far more Mad Max/Road Warrior by way of Black Sabbath and Celtic Frost.

The art is dreamy-good. Percival clearly summoning the likes of HR Giger and Simon Bisley, and does them both one up by telling a cohesive story, something less like a bad acid trip and more like someone just hitting away at your cerebral cortex with a steam-powered sledgehammer. These characters are sexy, they are savage, they are gloriously wicked. Entirely too much personality to be relegated under the label of anti-hero, this is aesthetically warped on more imaginative fronts than merely that. These Enchanted are not just the kids trying to reclaim their innocence in the confusing face of fastly approaching post-pubescence, they are exotic old warhorses in an unreal world, as bloodthirsty as they need to be in battling these insane things in the dark. The pages of this comic are full of their very own kind of life. Just the idea of Magic Beans as a drug of choice, and the crazy visuals that stem (pun intended) from that...

Percival is excitingly genius here. Really good. Buy this book so he will be obliged to make more of the same.

http://www.radicalcomics.com