Once more unto the Ether.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Kindt
Art: David Rubin
What They Say:
Portals between Earth and the Ether begin to crack open unleashing devastating magical fury on our planet and only adventurer Boone Dias can seal the breaches. In order to put an end to this chaos, Boone recruits a powerful team of mystical beings including a grumpy, spell-writing fairy; a bickering, lavender gorilla; and a bull-headed, motorcycling spell-hacker. These heroes set off on a journey taking the reader through the center of volcanoes, deserts full of living mummies and sphinxes, and a bizarre fairy forest in an effort to save both worlds from complete destruction!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I had missed out on the original Ether series previously due to other commitments but a combination of Matt Kindt and David Rubin really makes this a must-read experience. Thankfully, Kindt has long been killed at placing just enough within context so that you can go into this new book without reading the previous one and getting the gist of things while also advancing this story. That helps a lot but I’m also here, big time, to enjoy more of David Rubin’s artwork. He’s gotten around in a couple of other high profile books recently so getting more of his style and the mix of it that he has, especially with a property like this, just delights me as it’s the right kind of craziness to go all out with.
The premise is simple enough in that there are ways to travel between Earth and another dimension of sorts known as the Ether. This has been around for a long time and there’s an agency that has worked for what looks like quite a few decades to say the least in trying to keep the barriers up between the two. The problem is that days spent in the Ether, where humans have a bit of a rough time adapting in general, is the equivalent of months on the Earth side. There aren’t a lot of people really willing to do that as it has all kinds of complications. But there are those that will and one of them is Boone Dias, who has spent time there for a while before ending up in an Italian jail for stealing food. Suffice to say, Ether food is bad and he pops back to grab stuff from time to time and got busted for it since he doesn’t have any funds.
What’s happening now is seemingly related to before as the Copper Golems are pounding their way through the barrier and Ether-ness is starting to seep through. Boone’s needed to go and try and deal with it since he has modern contacts and is quite capable. Mostly, we get the setup here for this as he’s freed with some real incentive and that brings us to understanding his family situation and just how much was (quite willingly) sacrificed for it. There’s a lot said with little here and it’s definitely beautifully illustrated. At the same time, we get the more surreal side of the Ether once he reconnects with those he knows there as he puts a plan into motion to try and deal with it, which includes a jail breakout from a place nobody expects one to happen from the outside. The main threat itself with the Copper Golems isn’t covered here in a lot of detail, though connections are established, but it works well to allow us to connect with the group he’s putting together.
In Summary:
With a straightforward setup in place here, Ether: The Copper Golems does a lot of fun stuff in introducing us to Boone and what’s going on with him. You get a good sense of how it moves forward from the previous series while still being very accessible to new readers (and making them want to go back and read that original run). Kindt’s got the good stuff coming up but the execution of what we get here with Boone put back into play and connecting with those in the Ether, as well as a jail breakout, makes for a lot of fun. But that fun is made really fun thanks to David Rubin’s artwork. I love the look of the real world portion of the story and just how dramatic of a shift it is, particularly in color, when they head to the Ether. I can’t wait to see what additional weirdness is coming up here as I trust Rubin to deliver some really fun things with the designs for it.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: May 16th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
