Broken Frontier

Th3rd World Studios’ offering for Free Comic Book Day is a preview of the next volume of their series, The Stuff of Legend. A friend of mine described this book as “Toy Story meets Saving Private Ryan” and he is not far off. A group of World War II era toys come to life and pursue the dread Boogeyman into another world to rescue their young owner. However, in this world, they become real, as do the dangers and trauma of combat. The transformations of the toys are quite striking, such as a teddy bear that becomes a savage grizzly, a Jack-in-the-Box turned laughing daredevil, and a clockwork angel forced into a role of violence she was never designed for. The story has all the camaraderie and action of a war movie and the sepia tone art lends the whole thing a timeless fairy tale feel. It’s a mixture that shouldn’t work yet does so wonderfully. Don’t ya just love comics?

The issue also offered a preview of a new series, Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, based on Cassandra Clare’s series of young readers novels. This feature failed to grab me as strongly as Stuff of Legend, as it felt very similar to numerous urban fantasy/demon-hunter series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and countless others. The books appear to be very popular, however, so perhaps there is more to the story than meets the eye in this short tale of a girl witnessing a demon-slaying in a dance club. The script is serviceable and the art is of a much more mainstream, semi-realistic comic book style. Not bad, just not as immediately striking as the lead feature in this one-shot.

The issue closes out with several of Th3rd World’s webcomics, SuperFogeys, Pinkerton, and Legend of Bill, each of which earn few laughs.

Based on this sample, I would highly recommend Stuff of Legend but I’m not certain about City of Bones, unless you are a fan of the novels or the urban demon-hunter genre.