REVIEW: Isola #1

Story: Brenden Fletcher and Karl Kerschl
Art: Karl Kerschl and Msassyk
Letters: AdityaBidikar
Review: Art Bee

My folder at my LCS, Comics Cubed, geysered forth an interesting comic book this week. The cover baffled me because, while being gorgeous, the font used was hard to decipher. The comic expert on staff at the time stated, “Yes. That had me stumped too. I had to open the cover and look at the copyright accreditation to understand that it says ‘Isola’.”
This helped immensely, and then the font made perfect sense, leaving me feeling a bit silly. Flipping through the pages, my eyes were treated to some amazing artwork; more on that later, though.

Oh, ok, I will talk about the art. Stop screaming at me…

What caught my eye and encouraged me to buy this book was the gorgeous image of a tiger resembling Prince Adam’s cowardly cat from the He-Man cartoon. Kringer was one of my favorite childhood characters. The cat drawn in this comic is rendered in a similar style with different coloring and is very attractive. All of the artwork in the issue is top shelf, colorful, and worthy of admiration. The artists’ use of blue tones is very conducive to developing detail during nighttime scenes, and I must say some of the best I have seen. Their use of tones in the transition of night to dawn is very compelling. 

The story opens with a cryptic poem giving clues to the story:

“Long dream’t Crown
Awakens Four
Mark haunted hearts
To Isola’s shore”

The story then begins with a warrior in service to a Queen Olwyn, whom has been transformed into a purple tiger with blue stripes, stalking a strange sound at night. There is obviously a communication barrier and this warrior seems to be the focus of the story. After two readings I found the narrative to be quite confusing. That may be intentional to build suspense in the confusion of this warrior, who I believe is a woman. We have no other clues other than the female facial features, since the armor conceals body type and all conversations with her are gender neutral.
This issue is packed full of questions with little information given but that little bit of knowledge is enough to drive the story. The suspense alone is enough to keep reading. Later in the book an interesting druid-type person with the quirkiest personality enters the scene and seems to know the identity of the cat, as well as how to teach her.

Do I like this series? My answer is “I don’t know yet”.
This may take another issue or two to see where they are going. The pending questions with the story so far are enough to make me want answers. Where and what is Isola? Why is the queen in animal form? What was with that giant bird that was being eaten by all of the other animals? Will the warrior be able to protect her queen? Will the tiger ever be able to communicate?
What do you mean I didn’t say anything about a giant bird? It is right in the middle of the issue. A two page depiction. Read the issue if you don’t believe me.