So, a book from two weeks ago I did not expect to find at any of the local stores around here. But sometimes life hands me little surprises. Pleasant surprises, I mean. Unpleasant surprises are a much more frequent occurrence.
The title character is a scientist who basically embraced a mixture of science and sorcery until he could find some fabled child with a 'heart of stone' that would grant him immortality. The Phantom Starkiller one-shot from last year involved a friend of his, now a resurrected corpse, seeking out the child and finding her. But, he caught feelings in his lukewarm, reanimated heart and doesn't want to hand her over. That does not end well for him, as you will see in the selected panel below. He doesn't stay dead, thanks to the kid gifting him a bit of a magic crystal. He can pay her back by rescuing her from Count Draco, in the next one-shot whenever it comes out next year.
The way this seems to work is each one-shot focuses on a specific character and their backstory, while also advancing the overarching plot, which revolves around the Cyptocrystalline Stone. I think Goral and Schmalke do a solid job of balancing the two goals.
The whole thing is like Star Wars, but reconfigured to look cooler spray painted on the side of somebody's van. More emphasis on sorcery and magic that requires a sacrifice of lives or souls to use Half-living hunters. There's definitely a sense of a lawless frontier, full of hives of scum and villainy. Count Draco turned to some powerful sorcerer overlord for the help he needed to stay alive long enough to find the kid, and you can see how he ends up looking after that process is done.
What's weird, it's simultaneously brighter and more vivid than Star Wars, but also more dreary and depressing. Draco's life-support system is purple and yellow, rather than shades of black. Phantom Starkiller is a neon-green skeleton wearing a bright orange cloak. But the surroundings are variations of dull greens, greys, and blues. The one town we see looks like a Wild West mining town that's falling apart, the only real color the blood Starkiller and the kid spilled. The big fight takes place in a spaceship graveyard that's mostly vague grey outlines and haze. It does help the characters that matter seize your attention, since they're the only things that really pop.
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