Broken Frontier

Alex is recounting his dreams to some off the page. The reader is thrust into the child’s dreamscape where he is befreinded by an elf, a fairy and a rock boy. They fight a giant cyclops and there’s a dragon in this first issue of the all ages fantasy.

There is nothing truly remarkable about the story. The book works on fantasy tropes and that is about it. Other than making it a human boy’s recounting of dream to what is probably some kind of therapist, which is the kind of thing that could make the story interesting somewhere down the road, it is a normal young reader fantasy affair.

There are a couple of things that make this particular book very interesting. First, this is the IDW publishing of a web comic that has been running for over two years. That is what every web comic sets out to do. Publication means money and means a return on the effort. What makes this one especially interesting is that this one already has two trade paperbacks available with new printings coming in the fall! It seems a risky move by IDW all the way around, but you have to love the moxie of supporting a book that they love.

The comic is written at the brisk pace of about a page a day. The pages are designed to pretty much keep you coming back and it is pretty effective. I checked out the website (www.thedreamlandchronicles.com) and it reads pretty well in that format. It actually may be more compelling as a single page a day story. A cliffhanger a day will keep the boredom away.

The art is a little off putting. Sava is using CGI renders to illustrate his story. What you end up with is the equivalent of screen shots of Reboot with the story told in word balloons. It is striking and absolutely different from most of what you see on the shelves, even the computer work of Crain over at Marvel for X-Force, but like my twelve year old said, "the art is a little weird."

That being said, she also told me to add it to her pull list. For an all ages book, that is the true test, do kids like it? And with 7 million readers worldwide (as the cover claims), it can’t be all bad, right?