Mad Cave Studios 2020
Created & Written by Mark London
Illustrated by Michael Camelo
Coloured by Julian Gonzalez
Book Design & Lettered by Miguel Angel Zapata
Witness the moment the Battlecats first met. Before the struggles at the Skeleton Maze and the conflict between King Eramad III and Valadar, this is the story of how the White Marsh Islands shaped Kelthan and crew into the heroes we know and love today.
I love these little insight stories into the team before they were all famous for who they are now. This one in particular strikes a soft spot within me and I wish we’d get to see more starting here. This issue also is way too short for my tastes, there could have been a lot more story within this issue. It might just be me but it certainly felt a little short in regards to the story page count. Otherwise what i really want to see now are more of them as kids training against one another while simultaneously forming the bonds of friendship.
The way that this is being told is fantastic. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. The introduction of the array of characters and how we see the bonds being formed is fantastic. The character development is a bit on the light side but then I attribute that this feeling like a shorter than average issue. What we do see however is what screams out for more, I want to see the young ones and how they are at the beginning of their time together. The pacing that we see here is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story we see how everything works together to create the books ebb & flow. It also works to showcase how well the story itself is structured.
I guess it is kind of cliche to do an arc of when they were young as that bandwagon seems to have run its course but after this I for one don’t care i want to see more. Now that Mark has broached the subject matter it is as if Pandora’s box has been opened and there’s no closing it now. This is also what excites me about comics, it is when you least expect something and then when you see it you want to see so more of it, it engages your mind and imagination in unexpected ways.
The interiors here are fantastic! I love seeing the linework here and how the varying weights are being utilised to bring out the attention to detail. There is something about the way in which we see young Kelthan that is so gosh darn cute and endearing while still maintaining the high quality attention to detail that we’re used to. The way we see composition within the panels and how backgrounds are utilised to bring us depth perception, a sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the book. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a magnificent eye for storytelling. The colour work we see is stupendous. The different techniques being utilised to take the hues and tones within any given colour to create the shading, highlights and shadow work. Oh it’s gorgeous to see and from the vibrancy to the subtle everything is done in such a way that is nearly breathtaking at every turn.
I just wish we had more pages in this issue and maybe that’s just me since I got caught up in this in a way that I wasn’t expecting. Yes I want to see what happens from the table in the dining hall, like immediately after. Mark has created this rich luxurious world that screams explore me and he’s populated with characters that you want to spend time with. It isn’t easy to create such a world but here it is and you need to be here to find out why I hold it in such high regard.