Zeb Larson reviews Black Road #2…
The Viking North is an occupied war zone and Magnus the Black is the fixer for Papal Rome.
Something about this issue of Black Road didn’t grab me. The first issue had a certain austere bleakness that was appropriate, but it also had the power of the tension between Christianity and paganism. Magnus’ grief had a certain dramatic potency, but the dramatic issues in this iteration don’t have quite the same heft. Furthermore, the action is pretty small and the scale is very limited, so this doesn’t make for an especially gripping issue. It’s not enough to stop me from reading the book next month, but it’s underwhelming. Warning: I will be discussing spoilers from here on out.
Magnus takes the measure of Julia by sparring with her for a bit, and she proves to be up to the task of at least surviving the Black Road. They track down one of Farina’s attackers in an isolated village, and he claims that Farina was attacked because he wasn’t actually a Christian. Magnus quickly deduces that they’ve wandered into a Christian theological dispute of some kind. After letting Julia take the man’s life, they had down the road.
Did that feel short to you, too? It certainly felt short, but I couldn’t make the summary any longer without simply describing what happened on every page. Julia’s killing of the man doesn’t carry very much dramatic weight, because Wood is correct in that it can be surprisingly difficult to kill a human being in one sword stroke. (Good executions were prized for precisely that reason). But clumsiness with a blade doesn’t make for especially tense reading, and the actual act of bestowing death doesn’t seem tense at all. Likewise, finding this man was not in any way difficult, brushing over any questions about how they tracked him down beyond the fact that he had been wounded.
There’s a missed opportunity to discuss the religious tension here too. The man tosses out that Julia is a Jewess, which may or may not be true, but it’s brushed over so quickly the impact is nonexistent More broadly, there was a chance here to delve into the incredible fractious world of medieval Christianity, with its myriad doctrinal disputes and offshoots. Perhaps that will come later. However, last issue did such a good job in showing some of the quite-literal cultural wars of this period, and this doesn’t get into those. Coming off of last month’s issue, this can’t help but feel a bit like a letdown.
So, strip down this issue to its basics, and it’s some not particularly deep dialogue between Marcus and Julia, and then some brief torture and killing. Even Magnus’ flashback to his first battle isn’t very instructive: he loved battle. In some ways, that seems to clash thematically with the love that he had for his wife, because he doesn’t seem any different then except that he actually enjoyed killing, which undermines some of the damage that grief has done to him.
Perhaps some more flashbacks to Magnus’ earlier life will help subsequent issues. He does talk about his wife and her death, alluding to some possible survivor’s guilt that has stayed with ever since. I’m hoping that some of my ideas and criticisms are resolved the next time around.
Rating: 6.5/10
Zeb Larson
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