Spellbound, Book 3

If I didn’t know there was a fourth book to finish up the series, I’d have assumed this was the final one.

Yet the first “cycle” of the series ended with volume two.

My head hurts already.   This book, however, continues the upwards trajectory of quality for the series.

Using the Story Structure to Most Effectively Tell the Story

The book starts with the funeral of Blanche’s mother. It gives Jean Dufaux a moment to reset the action.  There’s a brief moment when everyone is standing around and thinking about what their next move will be. It’s a small trick that lets the reader set the stage in their mind. I don’t know about you, but I’ll often forget details just from the act of closing one book and opening another. The refresher is welcomed.

Importantly, it’s also a case of Dufaux using some brutal editing in his storytelling.  The first book ended with Blanche facing off against an enemy that outnumbered her. Worse, the backup she thought she had coming was never going to show up. The second book begins after that battle, with the proclamation that Blanche is dead.

At the end of the second book, Blanche kills her own mother. The third book then starts at the funeral.

Defaux skips over a good chunk of time in both instances.  We knew Blanche’s battle was hopeless in the first case.  In the second, there wasn’t much drama to be milked out of moving the body.

In both cases, Defaux skips ahead in the story to the next interesting part, and writes a line of dialogue or a single caption box to do so.  It’s effective in the way it keeps the story moving.

Sure, we all love a grand and glorious battle scene. This series will get that later. Dufaux is saving that moment.  He’s not going to lessen it by being just another in a string of battles. Instead, he uses the presumptions of his reader to his advantage. He knows we know what comes next.  There’s nothing terribly surprising about it, so let’s just move on to the next moment.

Plot, Plot, Plot

Right after that, the chess pieces of the series start to make their moves.  Blanche chooses to continue raising an army to fight against her home court, but not to make a direct move against her brother.  She has her limits, after all.

Meanwhile, Maldoror is busy raising an army to help, but at a bit of a cost that will complicate matters further down the road.  That involves Miranda, who is a delightfully vile villain, with an interesting mix of power and impotence at using it.

Meanwhile again, back in Middleland, cousin Brinus is doing his mad plotting thing, enlisting the help of Horribilis to make his move against a great many people he sees as standing in his way. Brinus might not be the biggest bad guy of the book, but he is the most conniving one. It’s fun to watch his mind work.

And it’s all leading up to the biggest battle scene of the series.  Who lives? Who dies? Who gets the glory and the kingdom?

And will anyone be happy about it?

It’s fun to see Dufaux braid together all the threads of the series, particularly in how he gets all the players lined up for that final battle and brings everything to a head.

Munuera Busts Loose

The moment is so large that Munuera gets a chance to open up his art and to tell parts of the story almost on his own. There are two pages spreads for the battle that are nearly silent.  Everything leading up to it is done in wide cinematic panels.

These things are not done on accident.

To me, it feels like this is the first volume of the series where Munuera got to control more of the storytelling.  He varies up panel sizes and shapes, but also sticks to the same ones when they’re working with a purpose.

As the various plots come together, it lets him get into a more regular rhythm with his storytelling. No longer is every page or two a new scene with a different character. It’s everyone converging on the same place to the same ends.

Munuera controls the timing and the reader’s eye with his pen. There are a lot of medium shots and wide shots to show the scale and the directions of the fighting, with occasional closer shots to highlight an important moment for the reader.

He also plays with extreme angles quite a bit. There’s a lot of dramatic up and down angles. There are some shots that almost look like forced perspective, with the character being so close to the reader than he towers over the rest of the environment that looks so much more distant in the panel than need be.

In moments of extreme action, Munuera can distort things and get away with it. For example:

The coloring from Sedyas follows the storytelling patterns that Munuera lays out with his direction. The prelude-to-the-fight pages are all done in cold blue tones, but the second the fighting heats up, things switch to a warmer orange tone.  It’s the so-called “heat of battle” given a color scheme that echoes that term.

The coloring continues to dominate on the book, though it does feel toned down a lot here. Many of the quieter talking heads scenes require less coloring bombast, and that’s when things get less textured with fewer special effect for blurring and highlights. It’s a good mix.

Crowd Panels

Another little story telling trick that Dufaux and Munuera combine to pull off repeatedly throughout the series are individual panels with lots of characters having short word balloons for comedic purposes.

It’s a trick Munuera also used a few times in “The Campbells.”  It’s a great way to create a quick moving panel for humor while still cramming in lots of back-and-forths between characters.

The football reference might push it too far for some people who think the anachronistic humor pops them out of the story. I’m sympathetic to that, but I’m also OK with it.

American readers might remember similar moments in Chris Claremont’s X-Men days, with crowded panels filled with people speaking in small word balloons so expertly designed by Tom Orzechowski.

Wait, It’s a Funny Book?

Yes. As dark as the book gets, there’s always been a thread of humor throughout the series. It shines brighter than ever in the third volume.

Horribilis has always been a very powerful figure, but mostly played for laughs. He can kill a person with a magic potion, but he’s also a woefully pathetic mole of a man who’s in love with the powerful Miranda; he’s never quite sure what to do next, but afraid to do anything against anyone. He reminds me of a character that belongs in a Winnie the Pooh book, for some reason.

Most notable for its humor in this book is the army of the undead that Maldoror summons for Blanche to use. They’re the sickest, gangliest group of zombies you’ll ever see.  As disgusting and scary and dangerous as they look and act, though, they’re also complete goofballs. They’re played mostly for laughs, like a big bunch of dumb lugs lining up to fight but questioning the reality of what’s around them.  It’s a welcomed bit of levity for a series with so much soap operatic drama to it.

The humor feels so extreme because the darkness is so extreme. The stakes on this book are pretty high, They’re fighting over control of the kingdom and, by extension, the Underworld. When they’re offset by scenes and moments of levity, both ends of the spectrum feel a little pushed to their edges.

You could have made this book a very serious story, but I think that would have exposed too many of its flaws. There’s enough craziness going on in the book that it feels slightly forced. With the addition of the humor, though, you forgive the book a little of the seriousness in exchange for the enjoyment.

The Overall Arc

From the first book, we’ve known that Blanche is basically cursed.  She’s doomed to go down a dark road. We’ll hit on that point even harder in the fourth volume, but there are plenty of examples in this book to show how far she’s come.  

Murdering her own mother in volume 2 is pretty much the apex of that darkening of her soul, particularly in a land well regarded for not allowing violence within it.

Dufaux and Munuera show her gradual transition into the darkness even more explicitly here.  Even her clothing choices are taking a turn. Instead of the feminine dresses of royal aristocracy, now she’s a warrior princess.  She’s shed the dress and replaced it with something that looks more like a warrior’s leather armor.

It’s just a pre-cursor, though, for what’s to come. I’ll talk a lot more about that in the next review…

The Lettering Problem

If there’s one short-coming to the lettering in this book it’s that there’s no differentiation between an omniscient narrator and a voice over.  

Dufaux uses the technique Alan Moore used so effectively that everyone since “Swamp Thing”/”Watchmen” has used it to death: Carry the last line of dialogue from one scene to being a caption box at the start of the next scene. Bonus points if that extra line of dialogue is a good segue or an ironic commentary on the new scene.

Dufaux uses that here a lot, with the dialogue doubling as captions, but there’s no visual cue in the lettering that you’re looking at that continuation.  It’s not like the previous panel’s word balloon ended with an ellipses and the new panel starts with an ellipses.

The new caption box doesn’t even put the line of dialogue in quotation marks, which would seem to be the simplest way to do this.  If not that, then at least color the caption box to set it aside from the omniscient narrator, who isn’t used much in this book, anyway.

In the example above, that caption box at the beginning is a new line of dialogue from Maldoror in the previous scene that ended at the bottom of the previous page.

To Be Concluded…

At the end of this book, the battle is over.  There is a victor and a definite new ruler of Middleland.  This could very well be the end of the book. It feels like the story is over.  The plot that started at the beginning of book one is complete. You could end it here.

However, there are a lot of loose ends still to wrap up. What happens to all of the characters under this new status quo?  Who is happy? Who is unfulfiled? Who is living on borrowed time?

Is this ending the one, true ending?

That’s why there’s a fourth book. We have a lot of loose ends to wrap up, and a series arc to conclude.

Stay tuned for that review….

Recommended?

The series is gaining momentum. Munuera’s art is getting clearer and cleaner all the time. The humor relief is welcome. There’s no shortage, though, on the conniving, posturing, grandstanding, and backstabbing. This is a busy story with lots of people looking out for themselves. Power can be quite intoxicating.

If anything, it’s the romance between Blanche and Maldoror which suffers from not getting enough attention. I could understand it if you didn’t find it well earned in the scope of the larger story. And I could also understand it if some didn’t like the humorous turns in this book, because it’s filled with them.

With that said, I’m enjoying the story a lot. I’ve already read volume 4, and then went back and reread the whole thing from start to finish. And I’ll talk all about that in my next review, because I found the series, in the end, to be even more satisfying than I first thought. I’ll explain that soon enough….

— 2019.019 —

Previously…

Buy It Now

There is no print edition of the series available in English, which I almost have to think is a good thing. I wouldn’t trust too many English language publishers to print it right in a way where the colors wouldn’t turn to mud.

As of this writing, Izneo and Comixology have the series for $5.99 per book. Amazon has it for $2.99. Cavaet Emptor!