Digging deeper into the realms.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Kindt
Art: David Rubin
What They Say:
As Boone Dias and his team get closer to closing the breaches between Ether and Earth, they find themselves pitted against terrifying Spider Golems, AT-AT-sized sphinxes, and living anthropomorphic monster-mummies!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we move further into the Ether series I find myself drawn to it all the more. I’m pretty hit or miss when it comes to Matt Kindt works and missing out on the previous series for this had me going in with a bit less knowledge. What helped was some welcome recap and some excellent artwork from David Rubin. If there’s an artist that I want to be able to clone and put on half a dozen projects at once, it’s him. There’s just such a great and distinctive look to this with the character designs and settings that it comes alive beautifully, drawing you into all the details in a great way. And he simply has such a strong mastery of the flow of the page with the panel design that it’s very easy to be drawn in just by that.
This installment goes for an even split of sorts when it comes to the missions at hand as the opening half of the book focuses on wrapping up the current encounter. It’s a lot of fun watching Grandor going through the spells and setting everything up to deal with the giant spider golem that’s part of the breach into our reality as it’s all quite mystical. Having Boone providing commentary on how it’s all just math that others don’t understand, science beyond them, he proves frustrating for the rest of the group but I love the way it presents the two different representations of the same thing. Boone, naturally, ends up going in to help as the danger rises and gets into his own trouble but the narration is great and the way he operates and discovers a bit more about what’s going on makes for an engaging storyline.
The back half of the book starts on the next leg of the journey with another breech area to deal with that takes them to where it overlaps with Egypt in the real world. There are some neat similarities here such as with the pyramids that gives talk of some universal symbols no matter the dimensions. There’s not a lot in the way of reveals here but the discover is great in seeing the things they come across as it plays parallel to Egypt a touch but with such fascinating color use. The group dynamic isn’t exactly comical but it has some fun moments as it plays out and we see how Grandor’s abilities are severely weakened here and the scope of what they’re facing is going to be quite different than the spider golem volcano side. Of course, Boone’s dominance of the story is expected and that it goes in a bad way for him is almost taken for granted…
In Summary:
Ether: The Copper Golems continues to delight with the surreal nature of this side of the rift and what Boone is exploring. The story continues to be simple in terms of what the mission is but it’s so far beyond that with the look and design of it, the creatures and characters involved, and just the scale of what’s being presented. Boone’s narration is delightful in the first half and I really just enjoy the group dynamic as it gets further along and we see how they all interact with each other. This series is such a great little experience that I lucked onto and I can’t wait to see more of what’s coming.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 18th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
