Sunday Splash Page #112

"Good Advice is Always Ignored," in Coda #2, by Simon Spurrier (writer), Matias Bergara (illustrator), Michael Doig (assistant colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer)

This 12-issue mini-series was one of my favorite comics of the last couple of years. I think in my review of one of Coda's earliest issues, I referred to it as "Mad Max meets Tolkein," which I generally stand by. There's probably someone who writes fantasy in that vein I could have cited, but it's not really an area I'm familiar with.

The idea behind Coda is basically "what happens if one of those great evils that are always after the magic MacGuffin actually succeeds?" In this case the word, is wrecked, but doesn't actually end. There are still people left, or all species and inclinations. They survived Armageddon, so what now? The answer, according to Hum, the grumpy, cynical bard the story follows, is basically the same stuff they were doing before. People scrabbling for power or security. The ones with power rewriting the histories to make themselves look better. Everyone falling into the old patterns of building walls, arguing, and deferring to the person who shouts loudest.

(There's one part near the end where the coalition of groups that are trying to work together are all shouting at each other. Eventually the yelling dies out, and when the leader asks why they stopped, one of them admits they were expecting her to yell at them to all shut up. Because that's what their bosses always did before.)

Hum is your typical antihero, mostly focused on his own goal, but can't quite convince himself to be entirely selfish and self-serving, so he ends up being helpful occasionally. He's almost entirely selfish and self-serving, to the point it almost costs him the thing he holds most dear, but not quite. He's deluding himself just as much as everyone else, just in a different way.

Bergara's artwork is great. There's a looseness and simplicity to the pencils that helps make the artwork expressive without getting stiff. The characters can react in outsized, comical ways, or quieter, more reserved fashion, and they both work, even in smaller panels. Hum does a lot of both, since sometimes he's pleading or gobsmacked, and other times he's trying very hard not to show anything at all. Bergara and Doig save the brightest, strongest colors for magic and magical creatures, since all that is supposed to be increasingly rare. So it's a big deal, something that everyone is after. They can shift to a very different palette for the Urkens' flashbacks, or the scenes were Serka unleashes her full rage. But even when they aren't doing that, the landscapes have this nice variety of colors. Sometimes the peaceful pastels, or gloom-soaked woods.