
Zenescope Entertainment 2018
Written by Terry Kavanagh
Illustrated by Daniel Maine
Coloured by Bryan Valenza
Lettered by Taylor Esposito of Ghost Glyph Studios
A group of super-powered beings calling themselves the Musketeers has emerged in Philadelphia. While their hearts may be in the right place, their methods are questionable—blurring the line between hero and villain—especially in the eyes of the police force, who would rather see them locked away for good!
Well this is how you start of a new book. That the Musketeers are from the Book of Fables or at least have their powers activated thanks to it and have been training at Castle D’Uther where Camelot is an other-dimensional kingdom well it all starts to make a weird kind of sense. I mean with Merlin and his young charge Morgan alongside them it would seem that things are coming along nicely. Though one must question Morgan’s loyalties already since we as readers know how she ultimately betrays Merlin so right off the bat there’s that intrigue factor about how long it’ll take before that happens.
As introductions go this one was handled extremely well, with a training session that allows us to get to know the characters peripherally. This allows us to see them in action, get a sense of who they are and yet leave more than enough room for character development to occur over the remaining issues. I also like the way this transitions to Arcane Acre and the mystery as to why Skye doesn’t have the book herself and how they know to look for the Musketeers in the first place. What that does too is leave a lot more questions than answers at this point in time.
Terry is able to structure this story extremely well and the way it flows throughout the book is nice to see. I am impressed with how everything is being set up and how we see the manipulation of characters which ties directly into the story arc itself and still leaves so much open is exciting. We will see why these three were chosen aside from what we are privy to here which is something else entirely. So far the characterisation is interesting and allows to see just enough to want to know more and how all this “newness” is affecting them.
I really like the interior artwork here as well. There is some some really nice linework going on and the line weights vary enough to make things distinguishable. The use of page layouts so that we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a good solid eye for storytelling. The attention to detail is really nice to see here as well as the costumes the Musketeer’s are wearing, note the costume designs are more “mature” and show off that new direction of storytelling that I like to see. Backgrounds in use are nice to see and that they expand the scene or moment shows a lot or promise though I would like to see more of them and not those coloured backgrounds but those at least add more interest than the blank ones.
Good guys, bad guys and those all over the map are introduced in a bold way here. I haven’t seen this much revelation In a while and the fact that we see it so prominently and boldly well it all acts as this huge misdirect so you don’t know immediately who’s playing who. This really is an impressive debut from Zenescope and that it’s a new part of their franchise and expanding the crazy cast of characters with smart and interesting storytelling is fantastic.
Bold, daring and full of action and intrigue this is a book I can fully behind. I’m looking forward to seeing how this all plays out as we welcome the trio to the Zenescope Universe.