Prologues
What a great idea for a comic. Mark, you see, has a much longer story he’s working on called “Kill the Wizard” (so you can get a sense of the genre he’s working on, just in case this cover didn’t give it away), but he wanted to practice on the characters and backgrounds a bit before he really got rolling. So he did a prologue story for three of the characters that are going to be involved in the big story, turning it into a mini comic. Not that Mark is the first guy in the world to do a prologue to a planned longer story, but this comic shows that he already has a pretty good handle on these characters (on their appearances at least; as I have no idea where his big story is going to go I have no way to know about the big picture). The stories in here include a snake trying to sneak up on a gnome, a demon worshipper who succeeds in bringing a demon into the world, and a veteran returning from some undefined battles to an indifferent king. Each of these pieces does a great job of setting all this up, as we see exactly what the gnome is capable of right away, the demon has something that he is obviously looking for, and the jaded veteran has an obvious connection to it. Oh, and did I mention that this whole comic is silent? I don’t know how that would play out over the course of a graphic novel, but it’s perfect for this. The art looks great too, so there’s no reason in the world Mark can’t get going on that bigger story right away. I do have one small complaint, and it’s a nitpick: the creature (and what an odd creature it is!) that gets stabbed by the veteran in the third story? In one panel the veteran is stabbing upwards into its neck, and in the next panel the sword is sticking out of its neck pointing downwards. Don’t forget to pay attention to detail while crafting your epic!
