Lake of Fire Storytime

It's YET ANOTHER Image #1!

This time by renowned colorist and first-time writer Nathan Fairbarn. And boy, let me tell you, it shows.

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The pitch for this made me think maybe it was going to be a heavy metal knights vs. aliens mash-up yes, but ALSO maybe it was going to do some cool characterful or thematic stuff with the Cathar heresy.

Was that... naive?

Also the problem with shit like full on medieval techno-war shit is you're competing with like Requiem Chevalier Vampire. There's a high bar.

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Honestly, it's not the concept that doesn't work, it's the fact that Fairbairn is such an amateurish writer. You'll see what I'm talking about in a few pages.

And yeah, I get it, he's not used to be a writer. That doesn't mean the readers have to go easy on him. Everyone was a first-timer at some point.

There are so many amateurish writers in the industry that have been working strictly as writers for years/decades that I can give him a break.

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>Also the problem with shit like full on medieval techno-war shit is you're competing with like Requiem Chevalier Vampire. There's a high bar.

Half of the reason why I like Requiem so much is because it reeks of Clive Barker, namely Hellbound Heart/Hellraiser. I love the lore of the first two films and it's kind of a shame that it was never competently explored in it's numerous comic book adaptations aside from Marvel/Epic's "Book Of The Damned"

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How is Next Testament?

Sure, but I'm talking about shit like this. Look at this mess! It's awful. Fairbairn doesn't let the artist do anything here, the word bubbles are practically overtaking the art.

Even writers Sup Forums hates like Bendis, Slott or Fraction know better than this.

Bendis actually doesn't know better than this. Bendis' letterers should earn like 4x regular pay.

Granted, the boring layouts don't help...

The dialogue boxes are too large, but the dialogue itself is fine. And after a few pages of minimal words, a conversation like this between charterers is welcome.

...but holy shit is this bad.

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The unused space in the giant square text boxes is triggering me.

It could definitely be edited and cut.

I disagree, if anything Bendis gives his artists way too much leeway, but his writing overtaking the art is rare these days.

I mean seriously, Daredevil(which is shit) is super guilty of having dialogue boxes filling up the entire pages and overtaking the art. And Alias is the gold standard of bendisspeak copy pasted lazy art+awful dialogue(even by Bendis standards)

That should be Theobald the fourth, I think.

Fairbairn lettered this too, which I feel was a bit much, I can understand wanting to have control over your creation, but maybe let someone more capable handle the parts you clearly don't know much about?

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Maybe he didn't have money to pay a letterer?

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It's definitely Theobald IV. That's not important, but why wouldn't you get it right? Maybe I'm missing something about the titles.

I guess. Doesn't seem likely though.

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Shit, someone's at the door
brb

Its where bad people go when they die

That fucking LOTR logo.

Must've been Candlejack.

Did op get robbed?

OP is kill. Surrender all hope for a story tonight

Not so fast!

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Not OP btw, figured I should polish this off for him though

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is this not good? i heard it was good. dont know what its about.

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I don't know what I expected, but I didn't think they'd look like that. I'm vaguely interested in it now.

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Crusaders fight aliens. Yay.

Only semi-fantasy, quasi sci-fi series I'm looking forward to from Image is Seven to Eternity. Great fucking creative line up, and the concept looks interesting. Honestly, I'm picking it up no matter the concept with those three, I'd pay good money if there was a comic of Opena just painting a wall, Hollingsworth carefully choosing the colors, and Remender narrating the process of the paint drying.

Yeah, I initially expected some kind of advanced race, but Zergling type things makes this a lot more interesting in my opinion

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Oh, right. I didn't even bother to expand the cover and already forgot this was more than "Crusdaers fight weird things."

Huh.

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and that's all for now.

The text boxes are seriously killing me. It might be autistic, but why make the stylistic choice for the square boxes and then not make the actual lettering match?

pretty good, I like

Thank you user

>the strip panel naked guy really liked this

I didn't get a chance to read the ending yet, but the first two or three issues were pretty spooky. It's hard to tell a compelling story with an omnipotent antagonist, but Barker does a pretty good job.

While the text boxes are kinda huge, this is still interesting, if a bit predictable

Most likely we'll see more intelligent aliens who crewed the ship than these zerglings

I think like, it's successful in the vein that these not-quite-history fantasy novels are successful. You know? You get these books that are basically medieval France or Germany but the inclusion of some not-quite-real plot, or magic or alchemy happens to exist, etc.

It feels like that. Your Cathar is already being set up along the lines of the witch or wizard in a novel like that. The characters are all very predictable, and the text boxes are insanely annoying, and the action wasn't even good, but whatever. It's okay.

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Are any of Image's recent series worth reading? I read a bunch of their #1s last summer but I barely remember any of them.

How recent are we talking? Off the top of my head there's Brubaker's new series Kill or Be Killed,
Chaykin's new mini Midnight of the Soul has been interesting so far
The Fix is Spencer and Lieber back together, if you liked Superior Foes you'll like it
Black Road is pretty great
And Black Monday Murders seems interesting.
And some of the upcoming ongoings look pretty interesting too. Azz and Risso are doing one called Moonshine, and Remenders working with Opena on some kind of fantasy story, I'm interested.
Oh, I've heard She-Wolf is good too, but I haven't checked it out.

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Red One

Yeah the paneling style + dialogue really doesn't work at all

Where the crusades really that much of a fuck up?

A pretty big shit show, yeah.

Depends on the Crusade. First and Third went well, though the third failed to recapture Jerusalem it left the existing remnants of the Crusader States in a better position. The northern crusade and the crusade against the Cathars were 100% successful. Only the 2nd and the 4th were complete fuck ups, and the 4th was only bad for the Byzantines, the Crusaders came out pretty well from it. (The Byzantines had it coming)

Most Crusades just failed to achieve lasting objectives rather than be outright failures.

Seriously on this point. No contemporary Latin Christian would regret the sack of Constantinople and the establishment, however brief of the Latin Empire in the east. The Eastern Romans had all but turned their back on the west, the Latins were still salty the easterners hadn't done enough to stave off the collapse of the Crusader States, and the easterners had heaped insult upon insult on the Crusaders that they had brought into their city, violating a great deal of western customs of hospitality. The Byzantine custom of overlordship also alienated the westerners, the level of authority the oligarchs of the empire had over their guests and subjects was outright alien to the westerners.

It was a powder keg of condescension, hostility and alienation that blew up in the face of the Greeks.

It was not an Italian plot to steal the empire's wealth. That's completely revisionist.