Spellbound, Book 2

The power players play more powerful moves. Things start to take a turn for the brutal and violent.

This is something I say the book after a mother orders her daughter’s death.

So, yeah, it’s saying something…

Book One, In Retrospect

Looking back on book one from the end of book two, it’s easy to see what my problems with the first book were.

It wasn’t focused enough.  It was hard to tell who the “good guys” and “bad guys” were.  People did bad things to each other for bad reasons. There were a lot of characters coming from different worlds, and they interacted in questionable ways. I wasn’t entirely sure who the book was about, what they were trying to do, or what the ‘journey’ of the series would be.

Just when I thought I had a handle on what was going on, the story would cut to a new player and we’d go in a new direction.

There’s also a whole system to work out of “magics” that comes unguided.  You learn about things as you go along, so it feels like anything might happen.  A writer might use that freedom to create a stronger story, or might use it to get lazy and make stuff up as they went along.

Thankfully, Jean Dufaux is not a lazy writer.

The best part of the first book is when the presumed lead character at the beginning of the book, having been turned into a spider, is unceremoniously stepped on and killed halfway through the book.  When the book started, you probably thought it was going to be a warped revenge tale, but that fell apart the instant he made a very bad deal. He was suddenly a non-issue, and it was time to change perspectives.

Pulling It Together

The second book, however, puts all of the characters into play in interesting ways.  Suddenly, the four part series is turning into a high stakes soap opera.

It is, as the cliche these days goes, a “Game of Thrones”-style saga of family, power, and magics. No dragons, though.

It pits families against each other, teams up characters from across the divide of the real world and hell, and shows people switching alliances almost more than your typical Survivor outcast.

It’s a popcorn flick kind of comic.  You’re not going to get any deeper meaning out of anything here.  Sit back and enjoy the ride. It’s quite the roller coaster and things aren’t going to slow down anytime soon.  Things come at you fast, and you need to pay attention. The language can get a little flowery at times, but it all is there for a reason.

The nice thing about being a four book self-contained series is that nobody’s safe. Characters are expendable.  Things can change in a heartbeat and don’t need to be walked back to satisfy a multi-decade readership of the characters.

With the story advancing as much is does in the second volume of “Spellbound,” the series is turning into an unpredictable and twisty tale of medieval politics with power moves from people who play to win, all wrapped up in the dressing of a medieval fantasy story. It’s filled with strife, war, murder, scheming, and so much more.

The Artistry of Spellbound

This is, overall, a different looking series from Jose Luis Munuera’s work on “The Campbells.”  With the second book, I’ve been able to adjust my expectations to this style. It’s less Disney-influenced and more Frank Frazetta-inspired.  The textures and colors (contributed by Sedyas) overwhelm the art. It’s more about layout and design here in “The Campbells.”

Quick tangent: I had a similar experience with Pierre Alary’s art. I first saw it in “Belladonne,” and then “Sinbad.” Those had a similar Disney aesthetic to it. Then I picked up his “Moby Dick” book, which looks more raw and has a stronger aesthetic borne of the coloring work. Sadly, none of Alary’s work has been translated into English yet.

Munuera’s art is subsumed by the coloring in “Spellbound.”  This book is a powerhouse in color design and special effects.  Munuera’s art is often the mere foundation for Sedyas’ awesome Photoshop skills.  It works, but it takes a little getting used to,

When you look at a single page of this work, you will notice the coloring first. It’s unique and it’s bold. It takes the color schemes and some of the baroque feel of the period and lays it all out on the page.  Munuera leans into this frequently, minimizing his line art in places, and leaving large swaths of the page for Sedyas to splash with bold colors, patterns, and textures.

Yet there are still moments in this book when some of Munuera’s fluid and lively cartooning begins to show up. It’s often in the more character-centric moments when that comes in. When it does, you get the expressive faces and stylish designs of the characters showing through.

Words Explain It All

Unfortunately, as much as I like this book, it does feel more like an illustrated prose story than a “comic book.” A good percentage of the writing on the page is expository. Sometimes, it’s caption boxes explaining that’s going on. Sometimes, it’s characters explaining themselves in clear exposition dumps.

That said, Dufaux’s script is a little looser in the second book than the first, so there’s hope that things are moving in the right direction. There’s also a fair bit of humor in this book to balance out the darker elements. It can be slightly jarring, but it can also be a welcome relief.

But things do happen fast in this book.  There’s not much room for wasting extra panels to act out a moment.  Telling the reader what’s going on has to be the compromise.

And, honestly, in a few cases it adds depths to the characters that would be too time-consuming to show on panel. Sometimes, it’s better to dump info on the reader and keep moving. That’s how comics of the Golden Age did it, right?  They explained everything that was happening on the same panel with captions and dialogue. At least Dufaux is being additive here. It’s part of the look and feel.

As much as I might complain about a comic being very wordy, it fits the feeling/mood of this particular comic. This feels like a classic sword and sorcery fairy tale story.  It has a bit of “Conan” in it, perhaps, or any of a number of pulp heroic fantasy elements.  Yes, that includes Tolkein.

The wordiness to the script feels more like a choice to create a style for the book that reminds the readers a bit about those influences.  That’s why I don’t write it off instantly. It helps set the mood and puts me in that state of mind.

Yes, I recognize the irony of talking about over-writing in a 2200+ word review…

The Trade-Off

To get back to where I started with this: Because of that story structure, this isn’t the best showcase for Munuera’s storytelling. He tells the story well, but the narrative relies on the captions and all the things that are spelled out for you.  

There’s little in the way of room for Munuera to experiment too greatly with his storytelling, or to create too many smaller moments in the panels visually that add greater depth to the story. If he did draw a character giving another character a furtive glance, I have no doubt that it would be noted in the captions, and not left for the art on its own.

This is also very unlike many of the BD books I review on this site.  It’s not densely packed with four tiers of panels. There are pages like that, but there are also plenty of pages with large half-page images and many vertical panels that create two-tier pages.  Munuera provides for an interesting assortment of layouts this way, and can even divide scenes up into their own layouts, but it is unlike much of what drew me to these books in the first place.

I’m not complaining about this at all. The imagery is beautiful, and that more open feeling in spots is often balanced by the prose laid over it.  Often, denser pages follow less packed pages, so it all balances out. It’s just something I wanted to note here.

And Munuera’s style isn’t lost in the book, at all. He pushes it in some different directions. The witch, Miranda, has a very Disney villain-esque stature to her. Horribilis — seen above — is a short con man style character. They all have specific silhouettes and looks to them, with strong gestures and posing.

It’s just that some of it might get lost in the colors, or in the storytelling style which is less reliant on using all of those skills to tell the story.

Oh, Yeah, and The Story, Too

I’m going to spoil the first book in order to describe what’s going on here. Please read my review of volume 1, as well, before moving forward.

At the beginning of the second book, Blanche’s battle against her neighbors has gone horribly wrong.  Her mother has betrayed her own daughter and sold her out to their enemies in order to put her son on the throne.

Everyone else in positions of power around the royal family are also brutally traitorous to the chosen Queen, and have sided against her with her own family.

Meanwhile, the leader of the “underworld” is now in Blanche’s world, and is falling for her.

The book starts a slight skip forward in time. The first book ended with Blanche marching off to battle, and the reader discovering her mother’s treachery. The second begins after the battle, with Blanche presumed dead. We’ll see some flashbacks to the battle later, but it’s more important to get the players in this drama moving.

If you’ve seen the covers for this volume, the next volume, or the final volume, you know that Blanche is not dead. It’s an early reveal and easy to guess, so I’m not putting a spoiler warning around that.

Blanche realizes what she’s up against and what’s been done against her, and is about to pull the biggest teenaged tantrum of all time:

“In other words, she intends to reclaim her kingdom through violence and bloodshed.”

I believe the short form of that is, “Turnabout is fair play.”

Or, maybe, “an eye for an eye.”

The overall arc of the story in the second volume is that Blanche has to come to terms with her new reality, and is moving towards a very dark place to survive.

Meanwhile, the underworld’s dark world demon type guy is becoming less dark, thanks to Blanche’s influence.

The witch we met cutting deals with Blanche’s ex is still cutting deals with anyone she can to get what she wants.

The Taylor Swift Sidebar

It just dawned on me: Blanche is Taylor Swift. If they ever made a movie out of this book, she’s the only choice to star in it. Just picture that first scene from the first book with Swift leaving her boyfriend cold to take power over her kingdom. She knows it’ll change her and she needs to be harder to get through it. It’s a mistake, but it’s just the first of what might be many, if she’s not careful.

And if we learned anything from Swift’s last album, she likes to play up her role as the villainess. (See the video for “Look What You Made Me Do”.)

I can’t believe I just pulled an aside to discuss Taylor Swift. I need a nap….

Back to the Story…

Past that, it’s a lot of jockeying for position. The cast of characters we met in the last book are making moves. They’re all out of self-interest, including (in large part) the psychologically damaged Blanche. You’d expect the rest of them to be sniveling weasels trying to take full advantage of any passing chance, and that they do.

Dufaux is very credible writing characters who have reasons for their action. They talk things out and explain things well, so it all makes sense. There are a lot of those characters populating the series, so pay close attention.

And then the book ends with the single most dramatic and character-changing moment of the series. It’s the point from which they can’t turn back from their path. It’s brutal and it’s told exceedingly well. It shakes the world and turns things upside down.

Literally.

Things are happening in this book, and they’ve moving quickly. That’s part of what makes it so exciting.

Cyclical Works

This book is also the end of the first “cycle” of the series.

I think that’s pushing the definition of “cycle,” which is a term used in the BD world to define a “season”, really, of a book. You can get away with it with “Largo Winch,” perhaps, where every story is two books. Other series, like “Frnk” and “Harmony” will go out to three or four volumes. But they all feature a natural ending to one story arc.

The entire “Spellbound” story, though, is only four books long. The story carries over from book to book. There’s no false ending after two books. This doesn’t feel much like a “cycle” to me.

I’m arguing semantics now, I know, but it did strike me as weird.

Recommended?

The hesitancy I had after the first part is gone now. It’s still not a storytelling style that may appeal to everyone, but the stylistic choices of Munuera combined with Dufaux’s ability to put characters in situations that test them and don’t always lead to them making the right decisions is enough to sell me.

I’d still put it on a list of books to pick up when they’re on sale sometime. There’s no rush to get to this one, nor to pay full price. It’s an excellent change of pace though, with some beautiful art.

— 2019.018 —

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