The Realm Volume 1
The Realm series, Issues 1 - 5
Seth Peck, illustrations by Jeremy Haun
Image Comics
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Fifteen years ago, civilization came to a sudden end when monsters out of legend emerged around the world. In the desolate wastelands that used to be America, pockets of humanity struggle to rebuild, but so far nobody has figured out just what the beasts want, or how to send them back where they came from... and there seem to be more of them every day.
Will Nolan makes a living escorting people through the monster-filled countryside, doing the odd rescue mission on the side, though the people he deals with hardly seem more civilized than the orcs and goblins and other beasts he dispatches along the way. His latest gig - escorting a small group, including a pair of scientists, to what used to be the American heartland - looks like just another job, but he and his sometimes-partner Rook soon find themselves up against forces unlike any they've yet seen. A would-be sorcerer king, a mysterious lone monster hunter, and a strange boy who seems unable to die will make this the most dangerous journey Nolan has undertaken, one with consequences that could save the world - or destroy what's left of it.
REVIEW: There's a line between revealing too much information - drowning the reader in facts and backstories and subplots and such that don't really matter - and withholding too much, leading to detachment and confusion. The Realm falls on the latter side of that line. The story introduces several characters and subplots, but isn't always clear on how they relate or how they matter in the main story, certainly not clear enough to lift any of them above "been there, read that" genre tropes to become something compelling. Nolan's a typical post-apocalyptic mercenary with a Dark Secret (which, thanks to the subplot clutter, is little more than a pointless footnote in this volume), the sorcerer Eldrich could come from any given vaguely-Lovecraftian story, the monster-hunter Ben stalks beasts and broods and reveals nothing of his motives or goals... I just found nothing here to interest me, nothing to differentiate it from countless other post-demonic-apocalypse tales. While I'm sure more will be revealed in future installments, my reaction to reaching the end was more of an indifferent shrug than anything else - certainly nothing like a desire to revisit these characters or the setting.
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