Zeb Larson reviews Black Road #3…
The secret on the Norsk coastline starts to reveal itself, and out come the wolves. Literally.
Black Road picks up some momentum again after a relatively slow second issue. “Out Come The Wolves” is literal, because that is one of the major problems facing Magnus and Julia. Beyond that, however, there’s also the descent into a wild kind of place where the trappings of civilization have almost all fallen away. There’s a reason that human beings have equated wilderness and wolves with danger for centuries on end: they suggest the end of human authority, beyond which anything can happen. Based on what we see here, that’s a reasonable fear.
If this book has a problem, it’s that it almost always feels too brief. This issue does a better job than its predecessor in no small part because of the narration describing Oakenfort and all of the evil that’s happening at the end of the Black Road. Don’t get me wrong, those pages are really strong. It establishes the conflict, and the idea of a rogue Bishop going off to do God-only-knows gives Oakenfort a genuine feeling of threat and danger. What does he want to do with a compound that big? And what pushed him out of Rome?
I should have noticed it sooner, but I only noticed in this issue that the story is subtitled “A Magnus the Black Mystery.” Stripping away the Viking/Scandinavian elements, this series does have a lot in common with a noir detective story. Apart from Magnus’ name and the general doom and gloom, Magnus’ narration in the first issue had plenty in common with the despair and self-loathing of private dicks in Dashiell Hammett stories. There’s the femme fatale, Julia, who seems to be able to kill with surprising ease given her innocence. And then, of course, there’s the big mystery: what is going on in Oakenfort, and why?
Still, if you take that out of the equation, the book feels sparse: just a little bit of dialogue between Julia and Magnus, most of which is about how cold the North is. The rest of the book is devoted to the (admittedly amazing looking) combat between Julia, Magnus, and the wolves descending upon them. The artwork is very stylized, and the combat in the snowy forest almost gives it a dreamlike quality, a duel between man and beast in an endless whiteness. I’m more than happy to read that, but it never feels like enough.
I’m starting to think that this series will read really well as a TPB, but in its serial format, it just feels very brief in a given month. I’m along for the ride anyway, but I think it will really shine in a longer medium.
Rating: 8/10
Zeb Larson
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