Been a long week as the only one in the office. One person on vacation, the other two away on trainings. So all the calls from the public came to me. Yay. Oh well, the shoe'll be on the other foot next week, that's for sure!
Set some years on from the first mini-series, Hum and Serka have found a solid routine. Serka rages in the Everstorm as necessary, and roams the land helping others. Hum pretty much tends their land, fishes, and tries determinedly to not be caught up in any sagas. Bergara cleans him up a bit - I stress "a bit" - but he's still recognizably the grouchy former bard he was before. Serka seems bulkier than before, hair a bit wilder, but again, recognizable. Bergara doesn't exaggerate expression quite as much as he did in the first mini-series, but he can get goofy when he needs to.
Mostly with the little spriggan/fairy things proclaiming the savior is nigh. Because there's another chosen one about, and the kid's followers/retinue/manager swiped Nag as a piece of the pageantry. Hum attempts to recover Nag when the kid is presented at a nearby industrial town, and promptly gets arrested by the locals along with the kid (who does have some strange hold over Nag that makes it behave.)
Serka, meanwhile, encounters the wonders of "natural philosophy" while trying to protect a group of tradesmen from bandits. The gnomads she works with have developed guns, or something similar. They wear the contraption on their head like a plague doctor mask, but it shoots projectiles out the snout. I feel like it's not a coincidence the smoke that wafts from the barrel is the same shade as the stuff the industrial town is smelting (which Hum describes as "iron pus," as delightful image.)
Spurrier narrates the issue via a letter Hum is writing to "Little Gap", which I'm assuming is a child they're expecting. Or maybe a child that died young or in childbirth. Hum seems determined to leave all the questing and whatnot behind in the "old world." It's all garbage, he refuses to believe any of it or want any part of it. His mistake would be in assuming Serka feels the same, because she seems tempted, or at least interested, in the gnomads weapons. Not sure why; maybe she's grown tired of having to kill people up close, but doesn't want to abandon protecting others.
Either way, I expect their paths will cross at some point before all this is done. Hum's caught up in what feels like a story trying to regress things, and Serka's meeting the future, or at least newer ways of doing the same old thing.
Separately, Jack Russell and Elsa Bloodstone arrive at a castle a guy had moved stone by stone from the Bavarian Alps to the Rockies. What, a McMansion wasn't good enough for his human sacrifices and whatnot? Both of them there because this guy, Doctor Nekromantik, abducted a girl from a town nearby. Yet far enough away Elsa found the best approach to be hitching a ride on a private plane owned by vampires, killing the vamps, and jumping out when the plane's over the castle.
I've seen stuff on Tumblr that suggested Europeans didn't grasp how big the U.S. can be, but that's a bit much.
Anyway, while Elsa's prediction the doc will wait until midnight for his big play is correct, she's wrong about what the big play is. He's going to unleash a bunch of monsters from some place called the Suffering Wastes on Earth, in exchange for the secrets of the universe. Or so he says. His plan to betray the creature is somewhat complicated by Elsa and Jack successfully convincing the creature Nekromantik plans to betray it for an entirely different reason. Which is kind of funny, and not a bad twist, actually. I liked that.
End of the day, the problem is mostly successfully resolved, but Elsa's horrified to learn Jack's rocking long hair and a longer beard when he's human. Landy's Elsa is less hard-boiled than the version that's been around since NextWave. It's the same character, but almost like a younger version. The arrogance is more of an act, she's trying for one-liners to sound cool. Just in general, this version feels like she's having to try to act the way she's been written over the last two decades, rather than it being who she is. Which is fine, it probably makes her less abrasive, a little easier to interact with Jack if she's not constantly insulting him about his fur or smell (although she comments on that) or his being a stupid American or whatnot.
Galan takes the approach of coloring most of the comic in blacks and greys, minus some red eyes for shadow monsters. The exception is Elsa, who is always colored in her standard orange jumpsuit and hair. The scenes on the plane are all in color, and the morning after, when it's her and Jack in his human form are, too. Once he transforms again, he goes back to the greyshaded look. So I guess Elsa's in color because she's still human, or occupies the daytime world, while werewolf Jack, Nekromantik, and whatnot don't. Though that wouldn't explain coloring in the vampires on the plane.
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