Posted 27 January 2012 - 01:18 PM
Alright folks, I managed to procure a copy of the trade, and Valka, Honen and Hotath if you thought Arvid's take was bad... I'll try and limit myself to the important stuff.
Here's the biggest thing: this story absolutely wrecks "Exile of Atlantis." Characters that appeared in this story are derailed to an almost contemptuous degree. Remember Am-ra, about whom Howard thought enough to write a number of poems featuring him? He appears: he had his eyes plucked out and wanders the lands like Odin, serving first as fodder to fuel Kull's vengeance and then to betray him(!) Remember how REH described Ala as "a young girl"? Well that's not nearly sexy enough, as Ala is presented as a voluptuous, buxom woman who is - naturally - clad in skimpy attire as she's about to be burned, like any good cheesecake.
But worst of all, remember how it's suggested that Kull's tribe was wiped out in a flood? Well, this Heckler - 'scuse me, Heka-la - was directly responsible for it. She caused the flood specifically to destroy the tribe living in Tiger Valley. Not only that, she knew this, and actively taunted and gloated to Kull when she found him as a Mowgli-esque boy. So this story turns into a quest for vengeance against the sorcerer who killed his muddah and faddah, slaughtered his people, and destroyed his home. Bad enough. But then we find out she specifically let Kull live in order for him to become King of Atlantis, setting in motion a "prophecy" about him bringing about the cataclysm. In other words, by destroying his home and people, but consciously sparing him, Heckler essentially made Kull the man he becomes. Does this sound a teensy bit familiar to you?
Now the "minor" stuff. Atlantis looks like Jurassic Park. Not in that it genuinely looks like an untamed, violent, dangerous lost world, but in that it looks like a Hawaiian paradise theme resort: there's even a bit where Kull goes out onto a lovely grassy valley just like that part where Grant & the kids encounter the Gallimimus. And, of course, the Atlanteans are composed of a grand mix of blonds, brunettes and red-heads along with black hair. I can only assume all the non-black-haired Atlanteans died out in the Cataclysm. They're all fairly iron-age looking, which isn't too bad, but they don't look so much like nightmarish barbarians of legend than hardy villagers. Teensy bit familiar.
Remember how there was a big fuss kicked up about the Picts being black? Well, for whatever reason, Kelkor - the Lemurian, i.e. the ancestral race of the Mongols, Tatars, Turks and others - is depicted as a blond, blue-eyed white man. And when we meet another Lemurian later in the comic, he's also blond, blue-eyed and white. I just... I don't... why? Why is it better to have a completely bland, nondescript blond dude instead of, I dunno, a badass Genghis Khan/Tamerlane/Khlit/Taras Bulba type? The thing that astounds me is that some could argue that turning Brule and the Picts black was a PC move, but turning what are supposed to be proto-Asians into blond blue-eyed white dudes is anathema to me. I just cannot fathom this change. It is amazing in its craziness.
The story itself is largely a whole lot of nothing. For a story with such a heady premise - Kull, the exile, returning to Atlantis - very little of consequence actually happens. There's no great upheaval, Kull doesn't philosophize to nearly the degree he should, the side-plot in Valusia goes nowhere. It's really just a big waste of time. There's also one of my bigger pet peeves in the form of clumsy exposition: the number of times I read characters explaining things that other characters already know, sometimes even preceded with "as you know," I was about ready to tear the book to pieces with my teeth. "I was raised in the wild lands of Atlantis" Kull says - to Brule. Kull actually has to tell Brule not to follow him to Atlantis, since the Atlanteans will kill the Pict. I think Brule knows this stuff already.
About the only good thing I can say is that the artwork is really very good - but only in action-packed or dramatic moments. The opening pages are the weakest in the lot, where the tiresome dialogue seems to suck out all the energy in the art. And while I don't think Heckler looks like she's part of the Old Race so much as the Wicked Queen in disguise from Snow White or the heckler from The Princess Bride, her design is very striking. There are a couple of truly fantastic panels in the comic with stark lighting rendering a very Creepy/Eerie-esque feel. And Valusia is rendered very impressively. But the story is just so... argh.
If The Shadow Kingdom didn't already wreck Dark Horse's Thurian Age, this certainly did. This is almost as bad as Thulsa Doom.
