Eternal Warrior Scorched Earth

[mateo107]

This is the first Eternal Warrior story since Incursion in 2019. It's nice to see familiar faces that haven't been seen in years, the big problem with characters being out of circulation for this long is that they can be either stereotypical or simply out of character whenever they do resurface. One thing I did appreciate from this story was that it was able to give us something that's been lacking in the Valiant universe for several years: character development.

The basic story is Gilad goes off to fight an old foe who's returned, leaving the Geomancer Tama with uncle Armstrong to babysit. While he's gone, Tama becomes a public superhero and social media influencer.

Overall, this was a story that developed Tama. Although parts of her arc seemed a little hokey, it was a satisfying and memorable conclusion. It seems a little lazy when an all-powerful villain from the past who's never been mentioned before suddenly appears, but it's also difficult to properly execute those types of concepts when the characters don't appear that often.

This probably wouldn't have read well as a mini-series, more than 25% of the book has little or no dialogue or narration. Personally, I'm not a fan of several pages in a row with no text whatsoever. For instance, in one part Tama and Armstrong are just talking on the living room couch for several pages while Gilad silent fights his way through a hellish realm on alternating pages, it probably would've read better if they'd just put the dialogue over the fight scenes. It seems like they were relying too heavily on the art to carry the story.

[leonmallett]

This is the first Eternal Warrior story since Incursion in 2019. It's nice to see familiar faces that haven't been seen in years, the big problem with characters being out of circulation for this long is that they can be either stereotypical or simply out of character whenever they do resurface. One thing I did appreciate from this story was that it was able to give us something that's been lacking in the Valiant universe for several years: character development.

The basic story is Gilad goes off to fight an old foe who's returned, leaving the Geomancer Tama with uncle Armstrong to babysit. While he's gone, Tama becomes a public superhero and social media influencer.

Overall, this was a story that developed Tama. Although parts of her arc seemed a little hokey, it was a satisfying and memorable conclusion. It seems a little lazy when an all-powerful villain from the past who's never been mentioned before suddenly appears, but it's also difficult to properly execute those types of concepts when the characters don't appear that often.

This probably wouldn't have read well as a mini-series, more than 25% of the book has little or no dialogue or narration. Personally, I'm not a fan of several pages in a row with no text whatsoever. For instance, in one part Tama and Armstrong are just talking on the living room couch for several pages while Gilad silent fights his way through a hellish realm on alternating pages, it probably would've read better if they'd just put the dialogue over the fight scenes. It seems like they were relying too heavily on the art to carry the story.

I finally read Scorched Earth this weekend. I enjoyed the story, albeit I feel the interior art didn't wow me as much as I want from backing a project to deliver a graphic novel (as opposed to a collected edition) - the art did what it needed to, and had to carry a lot in sequences with no dialogue, but it felt a little static at times - not bad, but not up to the highest standards of the VEI-DMG-now Alien era VALIANT.

The Earth-bound villain and his plot felt like something out of 70s or 80s Marvel story, and not grounded in the 'world outside your window' ethos of old.

Raze was an interesting antagonist, one which I would welcome seeing again, albeit there were some visual similarities with Exarch Fane from Book of Shadows, and both felt retro-fitted to Gilad's mythos. I liked where things were left with Raze, and would like to see the Scorch used again.

The high point was the way that Tana's story, agency and profile were advanced; like you Mateo, for me that felt like genuine character development.

I feel the cover is excellent, and it would be remiss of me to not mention that.

Overall, I would give this 6 or 7 out of 10.

[grendeljd]

I got this hardcover from the KS but still haven’t taken time to read it yet, lol!