Welcome to the First Issue Bin, where I — Ethan Kaye — randomly grab one of this week's comics that’s just starting up and give you the details on whether it should get added to your collection … or remain on the comic shop shelf.
Lost Fantasy #1
Writer: Curt Pires
Art: Luca Casalanguida
Color Artist: Mark Dale
Letterer: Micah Myers
Editor: None listed
So last week I sang the praises of Image's Moonshine Bigfoot, a fun romp that was as much sight gag as it was plot, possibly more than plot. I loved it. But all Image books are not equal, and Lost Fantasy #1 shows the stark difference between books from the same publisher.
Image has always been the home for artists to show off their individual visions, for good or for ill. There are as many massive hits as there are flops, that's the joy of being a publisher that gives everyone a fair chance to make a splash. And I appreciate that about them, that every pot has the opportunity to find its lid, every creative idea has the chance to find its audience. There's probably a market for Lost Fantasy, it's an idea that's not all bad, but the execution just left me cold.
In Lost Fantasy there's the real world, where we live, and the magic world, the "World Beneath", where monsters and magic lives. The latter begins crossing over with the former and the world governments partner with monster hunters to keep the incursions under control. For this issue, we are introduced to Henry Blackheart, one of these hunters with a magical pedigree and a mysterious past, who investigates a monster attack on a child in the woods of Montana.
If you are saying to yourself, "Isn't this BOOM's Something Is Killing the Children?" yeah, you're right. But where Something gives us little glimpses into the massive monster-hunting power structure behind the individual fighters before piling numerous books of well-planned backstory on us, Lost Fantasy covers it in a few pages. It feels skimpy, like the creators believed that the story of the attacked girl should be the sole focus and the world building was fluff to be skipped over in hurried panels. It doesn't help that the story of the attacked girl … isn't that exciting.
In fact, the whole book just comes off as remarkably flat. I felt like we've seen all these characters and situations before in other books. The pale, white-haired monster hunter is out of Dark Horse's Alabaster, with the attitude and characterization from BOOM's Damn Them All. The secret society of monster hunters is Something Is Killing the Children or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The monsters are out of Hellboy or another B.P.R.D.-adjacent book, art style included. The two worlds interlaced are a combo of Image's Birthright or Vertigo's Fables. The chatty, close-minded local police are straight out of any number of C-grade monster movies (and Something Is Killing the Children).
And I'm not saying that if you like these things you won't like Lost Fantasy, I'm saying that those other books pulled off the execution in ways that Lost Fantasy doesn't. The book is hanging by a thread onto an interesting premise, that the fantasy world is crossing over into ours, but if the rest of the book is going to follow a know-it-all character like Henry, at least make Henry someone you want to follow. What we're shown is a party boy monster hunter who speaks in profanity and acts better than everyone else. That's not interesting, especially when other books have done it significantly better and with more meat on the bones. There are over 300 issues of Hellblazer you can dig up.
It's like you can see what writer Curt Pires is trying to emulate on every page. The inspiration hasn't sprouted into its own unique thing yet. The dialogue is meant to be snappy but it all feels like it's been lifted from bad movies, where the smug detective gets smarmy with those he deems inferior. It's not fun to read. And while I don't generally have a problem with profanity in comics, here it feels like a substitute for emotion and development. The character said "fuck" or "fucking" so that means they're gruff and gritty. Like Hazbin Hotel, minus the songs.
In fact, the best part of the book is the fight at the end where no one speaks.
Luca Casalanguida's art is good in the action scenes, but it had me racing to get to the next page when things were slow. I don't know if it's a tribute to Mike Mignola's style, but the monster designs looked like they could be pulled from Mignola's Hellboy and that's not a good thing. The fight at the end was interesting, but not enough to keep me coming back for a second issue.
Ultimately, I don't know what purpose the monsters serve. They just appear to be fought with, like Pokémon. Some of them can be kept as weapons, also like Pokémon. There doesn't seem to be any driving force for them to exist in the narrative, they're just lumbering beasts that could cause damage if left unchecked. This book could be about culling buffalo herds and it would have the same amount of gravitas. And I guess in some sense monsters being monsters is purpose enough, but when you go to the trouble of installing monster-hunting training schools around the world, there needs to be more to it than, "sometimes monsters, then we hit." Straight up, the monsters are unexciting.
There's no editor listed on this book which is troubling in itself. Either an editor didn't see this before publication, or one requested not to be credited.
If you can tell from paragraph five above, fantasy vs reality books are my jam. There are some incredible ones out there, and you only need spend a few minutes searching for them. Lost Fantasy borrows plenty of the dots, but doesn't connect them in any way I'd want to read further.
Value: 4/5, it's a Giant-Size so there's a whole second story that continues Pires's Indigo Children, that I didn't read, so I didn't care or understand.
Editor: 0/5
Number of times someone says "Fuck me": 3/3
Dialogue: 1/5
Attempt to make a political statement with "city elites" vs "country folk": 4/5
Success in said attempt: 1/5
Verdict: Wears its attitude on its sleeve, but doesn't offer anything original to back it up. Pretty hard pass.
