Can the new Realm Knights of Earth survive their first mission or are they fated to fail?
Creative Staff:
Writer Jeff Massey
Artwork Marc Rosete and Ferran Sellares
What They Say:
After the Age of Darkness, the Realm Knights disbanded. However, as many new evils are rising up to fill the vacancy left by the Dark Horde, a new battalion of soldiers must rise up to defend the realms. Welcome to a new era for the Realm Knights!
On his first mission with the newly reformed Realm Knights, Captain Hook attempted to save the mysterious and powerful Gemini Twins from the clutches of the Pirate King. While he saved Karen, her brother Kharon was corrupted by darkness and turned into a weapon. Now, Karen has taken asylum at Arcane Acre … but is the school safe enough to keep her from going to the dark side?
Content (please note that portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As Sela escorts her newest student Karen around Arcane Acres, Earth’s Realm Knights must try to figure out how to work together. But, the awkwardness of meshing raw recruits into a cohesive team is something which Bolder and Masumi are learning with painful uneasiness. How do you coordinate an effective offense if your members are always tripping over each other? Unfortunately, they might have to have a baptism by fire to knock some sense into them, but hopefully, that will not be necessary. However, that time may come sooner than the hesitant leaders may wish with dark shadows lurking over the now vacant school.
Meredeth and the Pirate King have a treasure in mind when they plan to raid the grounds, but with Kharon in tow, their plan may not go off as smoothly as they wish; this former Gemini Twin may have been turned to their side, but his ambition may not coincide with the ghastly pair’s designs for the night. He has is own agenda which takes precedence over theirs, and as far as he is concerned, his goals are all that matter. But when the assault on the campus begins, the crew finds that these amateurish soldiers have more to offer than first thought. However, can they withstand this attack and protect their charge from the onslaught of these power hungry pirates without help from their doubtful leader?
In Summary:
Jeff Massey continues his melancholy telling of the Gemini Twins’ misadventures from the Annual released earlier this month. It would have been nice to see the siblings’ relationship before the tragic interference from the Pirate King and Meredeth, but the method which Massey unfolds their tale makes it all the more sorrowful when it comes to an end. We have the idealistic Karen and her worries of her brother using any means to find her and the morose Kharon, a being corrupted and used for the selfish whims of the ghoulish couple; how a sister and brother would have to fight their fraternal bond makes the tale of this madness all the more gripping. And yet Massey does it wonderfully through his skill unraveling of the classic sibling rivalry carried to an extreme.
The art style of the book also reflects the chaos of the story, with two artists used to illustrate the tale. Marc Rosete’s lighthearted optimistic drawings are used to introduce Karen to the school and the Knights to each other; as the crew begins their infiltration, the work becomes grimmer with the assaults as they sleep, until it evolves into darkness with the introduction of the trio behind it all. It is then when we are inundated by the more somber tones of Ferran Sellares’ work. His grittier and more frenetic style suits the intensity of the battles which encompass the end of the story and wrap up the escapades as Kharon tries to take over the operation by sheer force. This shift is appropriate for this point in the tale, even if it does cause the reader to visually stumble with the change in drawing style.
(I later learned via a Twitter chat with editor Pat Shand that the change in artists was to prevent any production delay due to lateness in handing the work over to the printer. Even if it was due to time constraints, this change did benefit to their advantage by better reflecting the mood of the story in altering the illustrated atmosphere.)
Grimm Fairy Tales Presents Realm Knights: 2015 Giant-Size was a great way to end the Gemini Twins’ entry into the Grimm Universe. Even with this brief jaunt, their importance was shown via a moving narration and the visual appeal of the dual drawing techniques. Here’s hoping that the contribution won’t end with this issue and will continue into the main series and any other spin-off which might benefit from their powers.
Grade: B+
Rating: 17+
Released By: Zenescope
Release Date: December 30th, 2015
MSRP: $5.99