Aster of Pan v2

Whoo, boy. This is where things go crazy. And I love it. Prepare for a great action comic in the form of epic dodgeball. This is when Franco-Belgian comics meet a sports manga. It’s magical.

Credits Blocking Credits, For the Win!

What’s Going On?

The first book of “Aster of Pan” introduced us to a post-apocalyptic world where people traded to survive and international diplomacy was strained into something not unlike a mafia movie set-up (“Gee, it would be a shame if something happened to your nice rice supply…”)

Meanwhile, our lead character, Aster, eked out a living by foraging for scraps and eating off the meager rice supplies the traders paid them in.

In the second half of that first book, a neighbor challenged Aster and the two nation states go to Dodgeball War. It’s a radical and weird shift for the book. What started as a post-apoc story centered on survival and a pair of younger characters, suddenly turned into Dodgeball War. Unfortunately, Aster’s people didn’t play the game too seriously, putting them at a huge disadvantage with a lot at stake. It’s a classic David and Goliath story.

Story structure wise, you know that it’s a best two-out-of-three series of dodgeball games. So when Aster’s team loses the first battle in the first book, you immediately know this book is gong to go all three games and that her team will win the second battle. It’s the last one that’s the question mark. Which way does Merwan want to take this?

The next two rounds that make up the majority of this book are anything but a simple handball game played in a walled-off basketball court.

Here, the risks go up as the battle to see who can hit who with an orb first intensifies. It’s not enough to repeat the same game and watch the players adapt from the lessons they learned the first time. Nope, Merwan cranks up the tension, by changing the environment and the set-up of the match, and then keeping it all a surprise to Aster’s team.

Additionally, some team and family drama/turmoil prevents the folks from Pan from battling at their strongest skill level. If there’s one weakness in the book, really, it’s the characterization. Characters go through the appropriate motions and act on their feelings in ways that affect the story, but I never really found myself concerned for the characters. They were mechanical bits to get the handball matches setup in interesting ways.

In the end, I’m fine with that. The strength and the power in this book is in Merwan’s storytelling in those action beats. (We’ll talk more about those next.) He can do whatever he needs to do to get that lined up right. I’m happy.

The overall story is the classic writer’s formula of putting David’s back into a corner, keeping him on his toes, giving him overwhelming odds, and then having him find a way to fight back. Goliath can be beat — even when Goliath is making up new stuff as he goes along — if David can outsmart him or outplay him, but preferably both.

It all leads to a third battle on an even bigger stage featuring a larger weapon set and everything played for keeps. The deciding match calls for big actions, and Merwan doesn’t disappoint. The final game of handball is a sprawling epic match that only grows as the match goes on.

Essentially, it’s your classic rising action and escalating tensions. It’s how Merwan tells the story, though, that’s something to see. It’s where the book shines. Let’s get to that now.

Merwan: Action Artist

Yes, there’s some emotional stuff, some family drama, and some behind the scenes difficulties happening inbetween the dodgeball matches, but that’s all secondary. It’s there to justify the story and the actions of certain people, but it’s not the star of the show.

You want to read this book to see how Merwan tells his story. He is insanely good at depicting the action of it all. The choreography is good, but the storytelling is even stronger.

He uses the comics form to tell the action beats in their strongest forms. His mastery is that of sequential narrative. Yes, he draws some pretty cool individual panels. The watercoloring gives the book an attractive texture and style. He has some gloriously busy establishing shots.

But most of the book doesn’t have those detailed backgrounds. In fact, he often establishes locations using white space to let the local environment shine through, and the deep background stuff disappear. The action and the story is happening in the foreground and Merwan wants you to pay attention to that.

It’s all in service to the way he tells the story in a sequence of static drawings. It’s comics, but some artists just draw pretty pictures. Others follow the script like a To Do list. Merwan works the page to make sure his story is being told in a super dramatic way. He’s studied action movies and big fight scenes, I’d suspect. There’s a certain cinematic feel to many of his choices, but most of all there’s a commitment to the comic book craft in the way he stages these scenes.

This book feels like I’m reading storyboards that most clearly show the flow of a scene, but do so with different shapes for every storyboard to best tell the story. Merwan controls the page and controls how the reader sees the story, from the timing to the chosen camera angle to the physical amount of space that a panel takes up on a page.

That creates an energy to this book that stands out in a crowded field of action comics.

Merwan also uses lettering in interesting ways. A couple big moments in the book are punctuated with giant lettering lettering that works to tell the story and be a design element all at the same time. There’s a big one at the climax that’s particularly breathtaking.

There’s also an undeniable manga influence to this book. That’s the first thing I thought from Book One when the lead character is a teenaged girl who runs around wearing a raccoon tail. But Merwan’s storytelling style with its exaggerated action, literal sound effects (“JUMP,” she jumps), and the isolated moments all remind me of some of the more bombastic manga books I’ve read.

It’s also the way the panels are laid out. Merwan sticks with more a classic BD style with a series of rows of panels per page, but then he uses some of manga’s storytelling tricks to put across his story. It’s a mix that works well with this story. He doesn’t even need speedlines….

This is the end of this series, and that feels right. The story is complete and the action reached a pretty good crescendo. To go any further would be to risk stretching things too far and losing the faith of the reader.

I do know, though, that I’ll be looking for Merwan’s name in the credits of other books in the future. I want to see what else he can do. (Izneo shows a few of the books in English already.)

Recommended?

Absolutely. While I enjoyed the first book, the second book was one of the most visceral action comics I’ve ever read. Merwan knows how to hold the reader in the palm of his hand and tell an action story with extreme skill. It’s fast-paced, it’s easy to follow, and the rewards feel real.

I don’t think I’ve ever recommended a book purely on its set pieces and action moments, but here you definitely have one.

“Aster of Pan” will be printed as one complete book from the fine folks at Magnetic Press in the future. At the time of this writing, they have a Kickstarter in progress that’s well past its goal already and has some exciting stretch goals already in progress. Looks like the print edition is going to be pretty spectacular. It’s due out at the beginning of 2021.

You should also check out the Kickstarter because they’re previewing a LOT of pages from the book there already.

The digital book is also currently available on ComiXology and Izneo.