Comic Review of The Realm #1

Issue: The Realm #1

Name: The Realm #1
Published: 2017 by Image Comics

Blurb:

Creators:

Writer: Seth Peck
Artist: Jeremy Haun
Colorist: Nick Filardi
Letterer: Thomas Mauer

First Look

Characters:

The Good: Will Nolan, Sasha, Marcus, Rook, Molly
The Bad: King of Costco, Orcs, Red Eye
The Undecided: The tusk collector

My Reading:

We start out the story with a man carrying a gun leading a cloaked woman on a horse. They’re walking under an evelvated train track through deserted streets in a city that is clearly falling apart. As something flys overhead screeching, they take cover under the tracks – we don’t see it, but its obvious they’re afraid of whatever it is. They’re late on their schedule and as they pass a Holland City Limits sign, they approach a Costco with armed men standing guard on top. Apparently this is the Kingdom of some post-apocalyptic world.
Inside we learn that the King hired Nolan to save the girl from some captors but that the information the King provided about what Nolan would have to deal with was pretty poor.

Asking for extra compensation for his added work, Nolan soon finds himself attacked by the King’s guards. Knives, spears, machetes, and an axe swing towards Nolan as he kicks, stabs, and punches his way through them. And as the King pulls a pistol on our hero, we learn the girl, Sasha, wasn’t the King’s daughter, as he claimed, but was “traded” to people for antibiotics that turned out to be bad. With the King’s attention focused on Nolan, the girl puts a knife through his chest…long live the Queen!

As Will Nolan leaves the Queen to her own devices, we see panels of what appear to be a falling apart Chicago and then The White House? Inside Nolan tells a guy with a scar on his face that the King is dead, and Marcus indicates it’s bad business to kill the clients. While he might be miffed about the results, he still takes the toothbrushes Nolan gives him and he gives Will a new mission.

The next panel gives us another key insight into this world as we see what looks like an orc with an arrow through it’s eye. 4 humans take on a group of green guys and the woman takes out “the big one” with another arrow through the eye – she must have been responsible for most of the dead orcs.

Next, we’re taken to the new objects in the sky. We see them on the cover but now we go inside and see a guy with one red eye and one black. He performs a ritual and sacrafices a guy in a robe to commune with some dark entity. He processes his faith in the entity and dedicates himself to do anything to gain favor.

The job Marcus had for Nolan appears to involve the 4 humans who took out the orcs. We learn the archer’s name is Molly and they want to go west to Kansas City. Everyone is cautious and we learn 2 of the 4 are scientists, not warriors which makes things a bit more complicated – apparently there are some dangerous things between Chicago and Kansas City. As Molly and her companion leave, Nolan calls down his partner, Rook, to keep an eye on the clients and to check that they aren’t hiding anything dangerous.

We then are presented with two interesting scenes. The first shows a group of orcs running in fear of thier lives from a beast wielding an axe. The beast cuts down the 3 orcs and we see him cut out their tusks as he pulls off his mask and we see it’s a red bearded man.

Finally, we see Nolan looking at a picture of a squad of soldiers that seems to include Marcus, Nolan, and 2 others. He looks at the photo and then at his arm as it starts glowing red and he seems to turn into a demon. Then he wakes up and looks down at his black arm.

What did I learn:

• There is magic, dragons, and orcs in this world along with guns.
• I gotta figure that those floating objects have something to do with the orcs and the dragons.
• There are significantly fewer people in this world than in ours.

My Thoughts:

The first scene sets the mood and environment pretty well. The post-apocalyptic setting shows us how cities have fallen but buildings remain and the best transportation left is a horse. Places like Costco become a seat of power with it’s warehouses full of goods and storage. But we later learn that things were relatively “normal” not to long ago as we see Nolan’s photograph with his soldier buddies and they certainly don’t look like they’re in an apocalypse. We also see a bunch of those floating things from the cover around the city. That’s where Red Eye did his ritual and I think those might have been what precipitated whatever brought the orcs and drakes. Yeah, we hear about dragons but we don’t see any yet. I’m looking forward to that.

So it seems that Nolan is a guide who takes travelers through the MidWest and he seems to be pretty competent at it. As a former soldier he obviously can take care of himself but he seems to be focused on the mundane when there are forces at work above the city that deal in dark arts. That Red Eye guy sure looks like he’d be willing to sell his own mother to gain power – kinda a Sauron type figure but he does answer to a higher (or lower) power. And as we can see, even Nolan has to deal with demons quite literally.

I think the way the story has been introduced is pretty cool and I’m intrigued. The mashup of post-apocalyptic world, fantastical creatures, and magic make this a fun read and I want to see where things are headed and what’s out there in this world we’ve been introduced to. Are the scientists in the book going to try to do something about the orcs or are they just the current job? Will we see Sasha again? What’s the deal with toothbrushes? How did society fall apart so quickly and what caused it?

The art is beautiful and it goes a long way to making this such a good issue. The run-down buildings, the deserted cityscape, the orcs, and more all contribute to the feel of this story. And then there’s Red Eye up in the floating objects. That whole scene is definitely reminiscent of many of the black magic rituals we’ve seen before, but that’s a good thing. Actually, there are many full pages with only a word or two of dialog but they drive the story just as much if not more than some of the pages with everyone yammering.

There’s a lot to like in this issue and a lot of unanswered questions I’d like to find more about so call me hooked. The advert at the end of the issue is pretty cool too.

My Rating: A-

This comic can be found on Comixology or at your local comic book shop.