American Mythology Productions 2021
Story by Christopher Paul Carey
Written by Mike Wolfer
Illustrated by Miriana Publia
Coloured by Arthur Hesli
Lettered by Natalie Jane
Journey to the fabled, savage land of Pellucidar in an all-new, canonical tale set in one of Edgar Rice Burroughs' most wondrous and dangerous worlds! A seat is reserved just for you aboard the incredible, vacuum airship Favonia as it transports intrepid anthropologist Gretchen von Harben, adventurer Jason Gridley, and Captain Douglas Connover and his crew to the inner world of Pellucidar, on a mission to deliver a supply of Harbonite metal to Abner Perry. But when the Favonia is attacked by ravenous pterosaurs, Gretchen will find herself hurled into a nightmarish adventure beyond imagining in the world at the Earth's core, a land teeming with prehistoric beasts and bizarre, humanoid creatures never before seen.
These are the kinds of stories that I love to read. A lost continent teeming with all sorts of life that has thrived and evolved isolated from everything else so that we only think we know the inherent dangers that can be faced. I also love that the majority of characters who end up here underestimate it and overestimate themselves and their own intelligence and survival skills. We see this on display beautifully throughout this issue already and I look forward to seeing what else is going to be thrown their way.
I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exquisitely. The character development we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interactions as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter all of which conspires to bring their personalities to the forefront. Also I like that this is what we see as their baseline personalities because we know this is going to change and evolve as the story does. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story, introducing the characters and getting things started in earnest we’re already beyond excited.
How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and grow as they add some wonderful depth, dimension and complexity to the story is wonderfully rendered. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as move the story forward is achieved exceptionally well.
The interiors here are absolutely phenomenal. The linework is clean, crisp and sharp and how the varying weights and techniques are being utilised to create the detail work we see throughout the issue is really rather extraordinary. The creativity and imagination that we see is sublime and whether it’s Gretchen’s hair (I wanna know how those huge curls are made) or the dinosaurs and even that giant crab creature are all just mind blowingly awesome. The way we see backgrounds and how they enhance and expand the moments as well as work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope is magnificent. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a supremely talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is brilliantly rendered. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is gorgeously rendered.
With such good pacing the flow of how we read this book is extraordinary as it feels like a huge amount of things happen and yet we still want to see so much more. The care, attention and passion that these folks have for Burroughs and the world’s he has created is clearly evident throughout the work we see. The story, the writing and the characterisation are brilliantly done and these seriously gorgeous interiors bringing all this to life is just done with such aplomb. This is the perfect marriage between novels and comics and keeps this franchise alive, well and constantly moving forward.