Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got two new hard cover collections:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

I was a fan of Crossgen comics in general. They published quite a few of them that I liked in their short lived publishing heyday. “Brath” was one that I only bought the first five issues of so it clearly wasn’t one of my favorites. But I recently picked up the remaining issues I missed for a buck a piece and decided to give them a read.

The world of “Brath” resembles our own. It takes place in the time of the Roman empire but the Romans are called something else. I can’t even remember what. They should have just called them the Romans because that’s clearly who they are supposed to be.

The title character, Brath, is a war chief from what is supposed to be England. He’s trying to stop the almost Romans from conquering his people. At first the story looks like it is going to tie in with the big Crossgen meta-story about the Sigil bearers but then Brath’s sigil is removed before it is ever used. No one has super powers in Brath’s world.

I remember now why I stopped buying this book. Too much “Decompressed” storytelling. Each issue can be read in about five minutes and they are filled with splash pages and double page spreads. I wanted more bang for my buck than “Brath” could offer. I also didn’t like the direction the plot was headed in. Too much like the movie “Gladiator” for my taste.

In reading the whole series I still have these same problems with it but at the same time it’s a pretty good comic. It’s well drawn, well written, and I like the historical subject matter. It may not have worked for me as a monthly comic but as a fourteen issue read it was fine. It left me wanting more. Too bad Crossgen went out of business and there is no more.

So if you’re looking for a nice little historical fiction/barbarian comic that can be found for cheap in the back issue bins or at online comic stores give “Brath” a try. You could do a lot worse. Now I’m going to have to track down some of the other Crossgen series that I don’t have.