I’m not 100% sure what keeps pulling me back to this series. I’ve said before how I’m not super in love with it, I’ve critiqued it, I’ve said how I’ve read much better comics than this… but I do keep coming back. I guess there’s something to be said for its persistence. Ody-C would definitely be further up my list if a third volume would deign to exist, for instance. Plus all the stuff that’s happened with Rat Queens. And so there’s something alluring about the series having got to five volumes, when a lot of the stuff I’ve read and liked hasn’t, or hasn’t yet. Because it means there’s been space for the story to develop, and for me to keep wanting to find out what’s going to happen next. And it’s proved it can continue beyond the initial set up, beyond the first brace of answering some questions, of continuing and developing… and still be pretty much the same thing it started out as being, more or less. For all that I’ve not loved it, it has demonstrated it has the power to keep on being exactly what it wants to be, and that’s pretty worthwhile.
That being said, my issues with this volume remain much the same as the ones I had with previous. I like the art, I like the story, but it just doesn’t feel as interesting and innovative a take on the mythologies as other things I’ve read recently (this time Pantheon rather than Ody-C, but the point is the same). It’s not really dug any deeper than it had to, or made any interesting points… it’s just taken the myths as everyone knows them and that’s sort of it? There’s a thin coat of modern paint but nothing more – it’s not the fundamental rewrite (while maintaining the spirit of the original) that the best takes manage.
Likewise the art remains good but not stellar. This volume particularly lacks some of the spectacular full page spreads that have lifted the others towards excellence – especially because they do a really good job of page composition on those, generally… they make something you want to keep looking at. They do, to be honest, tend to be great at set piece art like the covers but it doesn’t quite bleed through to the main bulk of the comic – I think the chosen style just isn’t ideal for it. And, for me, this volume also suffered by choosing the begin with a few mocked up magazine interviews of some of the characters which, though the photoshoot parts were really very cool, lacked the dramatic impact some of the art you normally get at beginning and end does. The text content just didn’t feel sufficient to make up for it, even if it did give us some more Lucifer, which I was rather happy about.
Which I suppose brings me to my main niggle – I am definitely beginning to feel the absence of development we’re getting on Minerva. Steadily, we’re building up page time for the other characters. Even Sekhmet, who strikes me as World’s Dullest Protagonist – she has two settings! Sex and Violence! That’s it! – gets her moments. Woden, Notable Raging Shitlord. But Minerva, who’s the youngest of the lot, who’s distant from all of their sex and drugs and drink and partying because she’s so much younger, because they keep her safe and hold her away… surely she’d be brilliant to have some focus – to have that insight into a whole different view of this world. And maybe they will, in volumes to come. I hope so. But for now, it definitely feels like the point at which this ought to have happened but hasn’t. The end of this volume felt a little… shabby to me? Not the book itself but the characters, I guess through Urðr’s eyes more than anything, were looking a little sex-obsessed and shallow, and it feels like focusing on Urðr and Minerva might be an antidote to that. And for all that the story is hammering home how some of the root of that hedonism is the knowledge that they only have a limited span of time, the sheen is still starting to wear off.
But on the other hand, there was a renewed focus in this volume on the limited time, and a look to the future on how that might affect the dynamics of the characters, so there were definite ups on that front.
Essentially, the story continues to be sufficiently enthralling that there’s no chance of me stopping reading, and it’s definitely proved it can get past that first flush of “ooh look at the idea” and sustain a decent narrative afterwards, and there are some good building blocks here for future interest, but I’m starting to crave alternative perspectives, which I very much hope will get dragged out a little more as we go on. I likewise want a bit more of a return to playing to their strengths in the art, if we can have more of the extravagant full page art spreads, I’d be quite happy. But I’m going to keep reading regardless, so it remains perfectly enough for me. Good, but not great, and always pleasingly escapist.
Next up, Provenance by Ann Leckie, which I should have bought ages ago, but the height of my (structurally unsound) to read pile guilted me into not.
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