Broken Frontier

Dueling pencils leads a short and satisfyingly simple read in a no-holds-bar contest of pint-sized imagination.

Remember when Morpheus battled a demon for his helmet in a game of words in the first Sandman trade? Well, Duel! is kind of like that, only with pencils instead of prose, and the stakes quite a bit lower than most epic comic book battles. Still, Seth Wolfshorndl’s painstakingly simple story is powerfully paced.

There isn’t too much set-up to Duel! Two boys are drawing in their room when one sketches a supposedly unbeatable warrior, but his friend replies with a monstrous creation that does just that, beating his friend’s creation. This sparks a draw-off between the boys, as they constantly create bigger and bigger comic book characters to beat their opponent. And though the premise starts out simple, the cast quickly escalates to include names like "Secret Snake Ninja" and "Eviscerator."

Like the set-up, the writing is pretty sparse. Dialogue barely book-ends the first issue, which consists of nineteen pages dedicated to nothing more than pad-born monsters slugging it out one-on-one. This makes the story an easy read in ten minutes tops, but the title reads "Minor Skirmish", leading me to believe there are larger conflicts down the road. The scope of the battles themselves are large enough already, so the writing has to step up in future issues to make both the battles – and their outcomes – more engaging. We don’t even know the names of the two boys, yet we know the names of all of their fantastic creations.

The pencils and inks – also by Wolfshorndl – are slick and solid. The character designs are imaginative, especially in later characters like Cyborg Stan and Triode. Once again, it’s the execution of the battles themselves, seen in the expression of the combatants and their ultimate fate which give the book a disarmingly cinematic feel. While Wolfshorndl’s art is more than sufficient, it might be interesting to see two artists with contrasting styles duel one another in later books.

Overall, Duel! has a great deal of potential, but it’s going to need to tap into a lot of potential very quickly in the next few issues in order to hook the audience. While Wolfshorndl should be praised for upholding the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" rule so many comic books ignore these days, Duel! needs to start unloading imagination by the bucket-load to keep this vastly original story moving.