A review by bookmeanderings
Once & Future Vol. 1 by Kieron Gillen

2.0

I’m very conflicted about this one. On one hand, I really loved the art style. Dan Mora did an incredible job bringing this story to life. The style actually reminded me of the animation of the cartoon movie Atlantis, but even better and much more dark and gritty. The story itself was also entertaining and one of the main characters, Gran, was pretty awesome.

However, that is where the positives ended for me. The story and most of the protagonists felt very shallow and at times, messy and underdeveloped. Maybe this is in part due to the limitations of it being in comic form, but I don’t think so.

One thing that particularly bothered me was that two of the protagonists who had no knowledge of the supernatural coming to life acclimated themselves to the reality of that way too fast. It wasn’t believable or relatable and took me out of the story quite a few times. The male main character also had abilities such as sword fighting and shooting guns very accurately that just wouldn’t be possible without any previous training.

Another critique I have is the story moved way too fast. This is probably part of why I felt the characters were underdeveloped and didn’t respond to the events of the story in a believable way. There wasn’t any time for character development because the narrative jumped almost straight into action. After that the story just jumped from action scene to action scene with barely a pause in between.

I love the premise, but unfortunately this comic didn’t really work for me and I was pretty disappointed. It is possible that comics may just not be the medium for me as this was my first time reading a comic geared more towards adults. However, if you are looking for something you don’t really have to think about too much and can just enjoy for the action and beautiful art style, you may like this one.