Above, below, and beyond
Creative Staff:
Story: Sam Sattin
Art: Ian McGinty
What They Say:
“FOR MORA WE STRIVE”
On tiny Mora―hurtling through space trying to find a star bright enough to sustain its fading life―everyone must do their part to keep the planet alive. Workers work. Leaders lead. Fighters fight.
But Loon Ozoa, confined to the life of a pit worker but born with the heart and passion of a warrior, dreams of enlisting in the Temple of Sacred Defense and fighting the monstrous Feeders that threaten his people’s existence. When his friend Val Mol, second in command of the Rightful Blade, promises Loon a place in his ranks, Loon hopes to finally serve a higher purpose. But his hoverhog-riding, glint-slinging, mine-master grandma and her motley crew―the Cloud Raiders―are none too pleased about Loon trading in his drill rig for a shift sword.
Determined to serve Mora, Val and Loon’s place in the military soon gets them lurched right into the murky waters of a conspiracy, one that holds dark secrets at the hands of their supreme regent. Will Val and Loon remain loyal to their commander, or will the secrets they uncover change everything they thought they knew about the purpose of their fight and fate of their planet?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Glint is dense. Like… stupendously dense. You know something’s off when more than half of the first volume is spent solely on world-building.
From the get-go, Glint blindsides you with heaping amounts of lore on top of the cast’s unique speech-patterns that are an interesting mix of hick slang, and space gibberish. This would be cool, and it’s clear that’s what the intent is, and yet this constant onslaught of world-building was just too much for this reviewer to handle. It would be one thing if the Glint world were set in a similar setting to our Earth with some noticeable changes here and there, but for it to be absolutely set in a fantasy space world means it must explain every one of its changes from the ground up. Or at the least that’s what it feels the need to do. And in some cases it works decently. Having Loon’s grandma refuse to speak of her glory days while others from her era absolutely idolize her is an interesting plot point that also builds up the grandma character. But in other cases, the exposition smacks you in the back of the head in the worst way possible. A lot of the space-army talk comes off as such, where characters seemingly forget what should be everyday occurrences, but feel the need to ask for an explanation because we as the readers are in dire need of one.
All the while, you have the beginnings of a lot of plot threads set up. Again, this would be fine, but like its world-building, it feels like it’s bitten off more than it can chew as we’re constantly switching things up to the point that you fail to take in key elements that are meant to drive the story. Between a sickly mother, corrupt government, lethal slums, and mysterious space princesses (it’s not confirmed, but it’s definitely leading to that), there’s a lot of drama to take in yet the story never takes a beat to actually absorb the information it’s presenting, and so it feels very wooden. You want to focus on the character-driven drama since there are bits and pieces of something good there, but suddenly you’re presented with underground worm monsters that attack the slums, or the king killing one of his pawns, or a mission on an ice planet. There’s just so many things going on and the story fails to juggle all the plot points efficiently for me to care about any of them. Even the concepts that have been done to death in other fantasy/adventure stories feel underwhelming and not fully realized because the story tries so hard to incorporate so much over so few pages.
And it doesn’t help that the character designs lean towards being so samey. When our cast isn’t wearing the same sculpt of mask when excavating for glint, they all suffer from a serious case of same-face. Sure, there’ll be some tweaks thrown in like height or body type, but when everyone has the same face, and a lot of panels are close-ups, that doesn’t help much. Even the coloring further confuses matters, as lighting between scenes can change a character’s color greatly, adding on an extra layer of confusion that I could have honestly gone without.
In Summary:
Glint has a lot of interesting ideas packed too densely into its first volume for me to follow or care. Between the world-building, off-beat dialogue, and multiple plot threads, it’s the kind of series that would have definitely benefit from a couple more issues to breathe. Regardless, it looks to be going in a decent direction and if you’re into the fantasy/adventure genre, I’m sure you’ll find something of interest among the tightly-packed story.
Grade: C-
Age Rating: All Ages
Released By: Lion Forge
Release Date: May 12th, 2019
MSRP: $12.99
