Gage and the Dragon's Tear 1 - 3

Written by Patrick Kellner
Pencils and Inks by Donny Haliwidjaja
Colors by Brian Valenza
Letters by Ed Dukeshire

Published by West of the Sun Comics

Buy these AND part 4 on Kickstarter until Thursday!

Change in direction.

I'll start right here by saying that this comic went in a different direction. Part 1 was steeped in an 'Assassin's Creed' style storyline, complete with a difficult heist scene with a character called Gage (as in the title) on a remote sea-bound Castle. It quickly went from there to a medieval court-intrigue warring factions storyline, holding off on the 'thief' motif for the while. I didn't mind.

A battle to the death.

There's a dispute over gold that happened between two rival towns: Farwinds and Farrington. The Lords of each town (Farwinds - Kevin Berg, Farrington - Lord Tolliver) staged a battle to the death with their best single fighter (Farwinds - Winston Cal, Farrington - Dar Haster). The winner got the Lord the ownership of the gold, along with a ceremonial key to the other's city. Later on Raven Cal, the son of the defeated fighter Winston Cal goes on a journey to avenge his father's death. So far so good.

As an added note: Lord Tolliver has an heir, Eric who is a total wimpy asshole, but he knows his day will some day come. He's under the tutelage of an unnamed guardian who is his uncle. He in turn gets some grief from Dar Haster in allowing the kid's behavior go unchecked.

Accomplished art.

There's a Kickstarter happening for part 4 that ends this Thursday which will no doubt tie up the storyline with Gage the Thief entering to do his key-stealing stuff. He comes with a heavy hitting partner Boris. It should prove to be interesting.

Fairly good storytelling too.

The quality of the artwork does vary somewhat. It's serviceable. Don't expect high detailed Heavy Metal magazine level execution here. The fight scenes work well, and in spite of the somewhat character-heavy material here it's not too difficult to keep people straight. GATDT is notable in its lack of 'strong female lead' type characters, which let's face it boil down to male fantasies of a near naked beautiful woman dressed in a chain mail bikini and boots. There's no adolescent fantasies mucking up the storyline here, its strictly a tale told of conflicts between men.

Is this a good comic. Yes. Is it a great comic? The art is not bad, but without seeing what the titular Gage can do with his thievery skills (which hopefully we'll see in the upcoming part 4) I'll have to hold off answering that question.

Next Tuesday:

The next installment of a very unique and special post-apocalyptic tale from Colin Devonshire:

By the Time I Get to Dallas 3!