NewUniversal: Conquerer (Marvel – Spurrier / Nguyen / Rauch)
Five thousand years ago, civilization was held in the mighty hand of the slayer called STARR, who defended his kingdom from all invaders. But what were these invaders? Simple monsters…or something more? In this, the second one-shot story exploring the history and mythos of the NEWUNIVERSAL world, writer SIMON SPURRIER—hand-picked by NEWUNIVERSAL’s WARREN ELLIS—and visionary artist ERIC NGUYEN bring to life a history like you’ve never imagined!
Conquerer is an excellent dark fantasy story driven by great talent in the wiritng and the art, but to try to tie this is to the NewUniversal storyline is a bit of a stretch.
Simon Spurrier, who is one of the up and coming “young guns” in the realms of fantasy writing, plots a classically written sword-and-sorcery sci-fi tale. Spurrier, who has Judge Dredd, Ghost Rider, Silver Surfer and a long string of Indie fantasy under his belt, is a combination of Madeleine L’Engle and Robert E. Howard, and is a wonderful legacy to the classic fantasy pulps. And who doesn’t love Eric Nguyen’s work? Nowadays, Nguyen and his very stylized shadow-laden art seems to be everywhere… and I love it every time I see it
The only thing I am not buying is the connection to Ellis’ NewUniversal plot. It sort of seems like there was this very cool fantasy story that they made tie-into Ellis’ work rather than have it spawn from it.
Ah well, It still rocked!
Issue Grade: A-
