Tag: orcs

  • The Hunger and The Dusk is story fuel for your hot orc summer

    The Hunger and The Dusk is story fuel for your hot orc summer

    As a lover of fantasy fiction and storytelling my friends have consistently suggested comic books for more D&D source material, for further stories. Unlike many in the space, I was not a comics fan and certainly not a collector in my youth.

    I came to comics through soccer — the friends that I made through the game. The first person who really convinced me to give comics a shot was ETHAN HD, owner of Destiny City Comics and real life superhero in Tacoma.

    We chatted about subcultures, genre and the power of story. I picked up a couple comics, different formats — March, Dungeons & Dragons, some supers stuff.

    Later, again through soccer, I met G. Willow Wilson. We chatted about the paths to fandom, embracing stories of others and discovery of commonalities in differences. I now have a Poison Ivy book, because I loved and learned from Wilson’s Kamala Khan and her Empty Quarter.

    Wilson has a new series coming out and it’s right up my alley. The D&D vibe is strong. The Hunger and The Dusk is set in an enviro-apocalypse with an invasion of alien and/or planar beings. I’ll probably create the main characters as NPCs in my world.

    Releasing to the public on July 12, The Hunger and The Dusk from G. Willow Wilson and Chris Wildgoose is story fuel for any Dungeon/Game Master who tells fantasy stories. You’ll immediately recognize the first issue’s story of destruction, sadness and tiny bit of hope.

    This preview is from a pdf of issue given by G. Willow Wilson. I had already pre-ordered the issue based on earlier reviews.

    I will attempt to not spoil anything.

    An interior cover of The Hunger and The Dusk. The left frame shows a building on fire. The right of the frame has the title The Hunger and The Dusk wrapping around a dark cloud. The character Will walks away from the fire, his head hanging.

    This is an interior cover, effectively the transition from prologue to main story. The prologue shows the multiple dangers facing the world. There’s environmental destruction forcing migration, there are the conflicts between human and orc, and there are the Vangol — an alien and superior being destroying all living things.

    They came out of the Dusk

    A view of orcs and humans after a Vangol raid. The colors and reds and oranges, with several bloody figures on the ground. The few standing are helping each other treat wounds. The main characters are in the distances, walking away from the destruction.

    The introduction of the Vangol is violent, swift. They are more powerful than orcs and humans acting on their own. Whether warrior or farmstead the peoples of this world cannot stand up to the Vangol.

    They came as an Omen

    The combination of language, color and layout are powerful. You see scale of story and individual depth in equal parts. The main characters are Gruakhtar Icemane, and Callum Battlechild (I think that’s Will too in later scenes). They have complimentary fantasy tropes and there’s depth to them behind just tropes early in issue 1.

    The Hunger and The Dusk mixes color themes in a way to signify despair and hope. Lush green fields are rare, a brief respite in a world where there is drought up and down the coast. The ending image of issue one is a transition from the oranges of a violent dusk to a soft, dark green hillside show that our protagonists might just be heroes, if things work out.

    I’m excited to see where the story goes. In interviews Wilson has said that this is a “hot orc saga.” I expect there’s some romance, there’s certainly found family to come, and there’s probably hope, because the world of The Hunger and The Dusk deserves hope.

    The final frame of issue one, this frame shows the main characters walking away from the destruction behind them. They enter a green land, still dark. Tara and Callum are out front, a third character is chasing them.

    The story of Gruakhtar Icemane, Callum Battlechild and the Last Men Standing is available in The Hunger and The Dusk at your favorite local comic book shop (like Destiny City Comics) or online on July 12 and throughout the hot orc summer.