Saturday Splash Page #168

"The Mud King," in Seven to Eternity #1, by Rick Remender (writer), Jerome Opena (artist), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Rus Wooton (letterer)

Kelvin had mentioned this book in the comments of my Sunday Splash Page for Coda, as another book set in a world where the bad guy has already won. Beyond that, they're very different books. For one thing, it took five years for the 17 issues to come out. For another, here the Mud King has stuck around to rule, rather than depart for some other plane of existence. Which means there's still the option for resistance, but also the risk of reprisal.

Adam Osidis has spent his life living on the fringes. His father was friends with the Mud King when he was just Garlis Sulm, a couple of knights. But Garlis had a power to see through the eyes of anyone that would let him in. So all he had to do was offer them something they wanted badly enough. Adam's father held out, and got framed as a butcher and betrayer, retreating into the wilderness. But now he's dead, and Adam's dying, and the Mud King's found them.

What seems like a suicide run for Adam gets flipped on its head by the arrival of a small crew of resistance who capture the Mud King. They don't kill him, because supposedly every person who let him in will die, too, but there's a place they can take him that will break that connection. Then they can kill him. So Adam joins in, but that means there's opportunity to hear whispered offers.

Opena and Hollingsworth are an impressive art team, though. Opena creates a wide variety of characters, creatures and locales. Cities held aloft by balloons, massive reptilian behemoths with metal mouths that spit lightning. Spirits that burst from the barrel of a gun, or elongated serpents that rise at the playing of a flute. It makes Adam, as the closest thing to a regular human in the cast, seem that much more alone. There's no one around quite like him, no people that accept him willingly or without some condition. And that's how it's always felt to him.

One thing that comes up is the lies people tell themselves. The Mosak, the small squad that captures Garlis, I don't know how they know for sure executing Garlis will kill all the people who accepted his offers. Maybe they just tell themselves that as assurance that it was OK to take so long to make this move. They had to be sure, had to make a good plan because they have to take him alive. Definitely not hesitation over possibly getting killed themselves. (It turns out to be true, but I'm not inclined to give any character the benefit of the doubt as to their motives in this book.)

Some members of the Mosak look askance at Adam because of his last name, because of the lies the Mud King spread. They expect Adam to betray them because it's in his blood and aren't shy of expressing their contempt. Then they make the shocked Pikachu face when he decides to make his own play. "Self-fulfilling prophecy" is apparently not a term anyone in Zhal is familiar with. Adam's father no doubt had reasons for keeping the truth of things from his son for several years, then can't understand why a young Adam disobeys and talks to a girl that seems like she wants to make friends. He thought his son understood the danger, without ever explaining what the danger was.

Of course, Adam's lying to himself about why he's doing all this, too. If Coda had notions people could (with difficulty) pull themselves back together in the wake of catastrophe and build again, Seven to Eternity seems to say those efforts will always collapse in the face of individual desires. The best you can manage is to tear down whichever latest tinpot dictator has assumed control, but that does nothing to reverse the slow decay of your world.