A fascinating new twist to the mythos.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Yasmine Putri
Letterer: Wes Abbot
What They Say:
An entire medieval world will be forever changed when a spaceship crash-lands from a doomed planet. Monarchs will die, kingdoms will rise, and what seemed the end of the world for many…was only the beginning! An epic high-fantasy story set in a DC Universe where nothing is what it seems… From worldwide bestselling writer Tom Taylor (DCeased, Superman: Son of Kal-El) and acclaimed artist Yasmine Putri comes a generational tale of good and evil within a brand-new DCU!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As I don’t get to keep up on the main continuity of DC books like I used to, when a series comes along that’s disconnected from it all and it’s written by one of my favorite writers, I’m all in. Set for a twelve-issue run, Tom Taylor is showing once again a really solid understanding of characters and how to place them in new situations, retain what makes them who they are, but really challenge them in how they react. For this run, he’s teamed up with Yasmine Putri who is doing the artwork and color design on it and it looks fantastic. I love this take on the characters and seeing them presented in this setting and exploring the way things can be adapted and reworked from familiar things. That’s half the fun right there but this team is firing on all cylinders right out of the gate.
The premise is one that reworks the origins of Superman by having the ship crash on earth during a kind of Arthurian era. But it crashes with Jor-El and Lara in the ship with her pregnant with Kal. It’s a rough arrival on Earth as they’re nearly killed because of how much it all looks like dark magic to the locals, but we see that Jor-El is powered up quickly enough from the yellow son to defend his family. It leaps forward nearly twenty years from there but we get some backstory filled in toward the end that’s fascinating in itself as it creates some new familial relationships that I really hope Taylor explores while at the same time teasing a few other characters that will step out of the shadows to really become key players in this.
What this area is like at this time has Kal’s parents as the rulers who have taken over after the previous monarchs, the Waynes, died. Bruce wasn’t a legitimate heir and couldn’t take the throne and has sworn to protect the king and queen, and their son in Kal, from the magic assaults that seem to be coming. It’s the only thing that can harm them and a faraway king in the form of Black Adam is looking to deal with the threat to his rule he sees in the pair. And he’s using a prophetic kid named Constantine to aid in it. So what we get is Bruce in his bat-knight armor going into the world to deal with magical threats, such as a banshee named Dinah, using his network of Robins to keep tabs on the various villages, and so forth. Kal, for his part, wants to help, but his parents are overprotective and Bruce sees him as someone too powerful to deal with these situations. But threats loom all around and in new and creative ways.
In Summary:
There are a lot of little moments here that are neat, seeing how Bruce works his Robins and the various character dynamics at play. There’s a couple of great twists along the way that changes the narrative well and you can see how it’ll really shake things up as it goes along and plays out. Taylor definitely is having fun taking the familiar, populating it with some great characters, and playing to expectations with some intriguing changes. Just the opening pages alone do a great job of this and set up so much. Putri’s artwork is fantastic, perfectly suited to this kind of work, and has me eager to see what other characters they get to bring to life in this era and style. I’m excited about this project.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: November 2nd, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
