Broken Frontier

A stranger washes up onto the shores of a strange kingdom in turmoil, and kick-starts a rebellion to bring down the powerful wizard that rules there.

Jamil is searching for…something, on the command of a goddess, though along the way he becomes waylaid, attacked by a behemoth beastie, and winds up unconscious on the beaches of a strange, unknown kingdom. Quickly, then, everything falls apart as Jamil sparks a civil war between the two daughters of the kingdom’s incumbent sorcerer-king, Uncaltzram. Now, it’s only a matter of time before our hero finds himself in way over his head.

Jaime Chase (previously the artist on Panel Press’ Death, Cold as Steel series), pulls double duty, churning out both art and script for this, his first creator-owned project, a five-part, serialized graphic novel called Muse. The story is fundamentally a Conan tale: an outsider enters into a strange land, becomes embroiled in that populace’s politics, and runs the gamut of classic components -- forbidden love, black magic, giant creatures. The major difference, though, is in the choice of hero and consequently the story’s flavor -- Jamil isn’t Conan, or anything like him. He’s a hapless, talent-less, unassuming everyman that just happens to get very, very unlucky and lucky in equal measures.

That puts the story firmly inside tongue-in-cheek territory, with offbeat humor interspersed by deadly serious swords and sorcery stuff. It’s grim in plot, though the protagonist is written as a complete wisenheimer, and most of what he does is executed in the spirit of a non-violent anarchist finding himself upon an established government’s shores (hijinks ensue, nothing that’d ever be found within the gritty sword-and-sandals sensibility of a Howard yarn).

The influences of Muse (pun intended) are obvious, though its strength lies in the fact that it’s really its own thing, a fantasy epic unlike any other, a style and sense wholly unique. Chase has managed a story that isn’t derivative, and yet feels as classic as any pulp novel of yesteryear. And the art -- oh, baby, I love me some Jaime Chase art. His fine art background translates wonderfully into comics, and reminds me of the days when Mike Mignola was new to the comics scene, his art prized by professionals and reviled by fans due to its unconventionality.

One word of warning: if you’re going to buy these books, go ahead and buy them all together as a bundle (you get ‘em cheaper that way), because the story is meant to be read as a graphic novel. The first issue alone barely gets the ball rolling, and I found myself desperate to jump right into the second issue, and then the third, just so I could get a handle on what I thought about the work. Answer: it’s an original pulp fantasy tale, one that won’t appeal to everyone, but for my tastes was pretty dead on everything I could have begged for, but didn’t have to, because here it is!

# # #

To see a whole slew of preview pages, go to: http://www.comicspace.com/jamiechase/

Or (in color, which the books won’t be) http://www.jamiechasearts.com/NewFiles/NovelHm.html

To order the books ($2.95 each or $13.00 for all 5), go to: http://www.jamiechasearts.com/Pages/Webstore.html