Aftershock Comics 2018
Created & Written by Cullen Bunn
Illustrated by Mirko Colak
Coloured by Maria Santaolalla
Lettered by Simon Bowland
Vlad Dracul and his brother Radu are prisoners of the Ottoman Empire. As royalty, though, they are treated with great respect. They are trained in art, music, archery, horseback riding...even vampire hunting! Herein the sorrow-filled truth of Vlad’s descent to the role of the Impaler is revealed!
This is why I am a huge fan of Aftershock and of Cullen, Mirko and company I mean seriously let’s do some alternate history featuring Vlad the Impaler and his brother while they prisoners of the Ottoman’s. What could possibly be more interesting? (that was mean in sarcasm voice) However everyone knows better than to question anything Cullen does at this point because the man is a damn genius. The first issue grabbed our attention exactly as it was supposed to and then he’s like oh okay let’s do issue and up the kitty as it were and blow them away.
Which by the way is exactly what happened! Because the level and sophistication of the storytelling that we see here alongside the characterisation is to point of perfection and back again. I was not expecting certain things to happen and was pleased by others that seemed to fit nicely. Though I will say this there is more going on between Radu and their trainer than meets the eye the man who was the Sultan’s shield when he went to battle now training Mehemed and the boys for what is to be the heir’s blood oath. By contrast Vlad is hard, closed off and difficult to communicate with outside of Radu and I like that.
The structure of the book is incredible and the way it flows like chiffon in the wind circling around a beautiful woman. It’s just effortless in how it all comes across and there are many times when the dialogue and the actions speak loud and make the story and characterisation continue to evolve. Every single thing that is on the page is there to move the story forward keep it evolving, changing and moving like life really does work. In this setting with these characters there was no down time in their lives it always on the move, training, schooling, more training it was a never ending cycle and for the brothers to be treated like both slave and honoured guest, same thing different wording, well it’s easy to go a certain way with this but nothing Cullen does is the easy way.
Mirko what and extraordinary talent this man is. The utilisation of the page layouts goes outside the box just enough to give an edge without being too much. His use of angles and perspective in the panels shows off a strong strong eye for storytelling. The attention is fabulous and it doesn’t what part it is either there’s all this manipulation of linework from subtle to bold that makes the eyes swim with delight. The colouring here too is rather splendid as it helps to really make some statements bolder.
Cullen does such an amazing job weaving the fictional with the historical and it really really makes me wish that this were actual history. That the world of historical fiction isn’t limited to romance novels or science fiction epics is something that should be paid attention to. I mean here we are with folks who lived and whose reputation grew got distorted and warped because of the he dispatched his enemies and here we are seeing a new alternative to how all that comes to fruition.
Exciting, expected and totally unexpected all at once this the way that storytelling should be as it ignites the senses, imagination and what if’s that are never ending.