Review - Armies

[Overread]

Title Armies
Published by Humanoids
Written by Picaret and Jean-Pierre Dionnet
Art by Jean-Claude Gal
Number of issues 3
Pages per issue 50-60

Armies is an interesting series if also rather odd. First up let me say that the artwork is really outstanding in this series. From start to finish the art is really inspiring and a treat for the eyes. If you've ever had any love of fantasy without "too" much magic and seeing armies clash and battles fought then this is the comic for you artistically speaking. If you are into comics for visual quality this one will not disappoint and I would heartily recommend it on that score.


Story though, story is a little different.
The first volume is a collection of short stories connected only by their relation to a conquering army marching over the lands and invading various different peoples and the troubles that those soldiers encounter. It is thus a series little stories that don't tightly link together, but which tell out little snippets of this empires military history.
This can leave you ending the first issue and thinking, well that was nice but what is there to make me want more?

Which is a poor way to end a first volume in my view and a shame because the pace changes for the next two and picks up a storyline with characters. However I would say that the way the story is narrated Armies is less like a story and more like playing a computer game. It's the best likeness I can come to if you've ever played games like Total War and "told a story in your head" as you play along. Armies is very much like that; early on a series of mostly not connected battles, no real heroes, no real story - then a little story emerges that strings together the struggle and battles.

It's a shame that the quality of the story doesn't quite match the quality of the artwork, but I would not say that the story is bad in the lest. Only that its not as "much" of a story as one might hope for.



Armies is a quirky entity that tries to tell the grand sweep of empires rise and fall in a very short span of pages for what it attempts. It gets there, but leaves you without that sense of connection to characters that other stories can impart.


In the end its a series I would recommend for its artwork, but not quite one I'd recommend for its story.

 

[maeda]

Almost all Humanoid releases have great art, but as you noted, stories are hit&miss, tnx for the review

 

[Overread]

I think part of the problem is that Humanoids likes epic scale. Which is fantastic when they've artists who can achieve large scale high detail artwork. The problem is that large scale stories tend to require a LOT of story telling that, I think, is just not possible in a comic format when you've only short issues and only a handful of them. It's almost like they want to take 3-400 word novels and condense them into a single comic.

It gives them either a clipped or rushed feeling which is a shame because you can see the underlaying story and see its potential for depth. That said I suspect if they tried a longer story arch might well defeat them purely on the fact that generating high quality high detail artwork takes considerable time (for most artists).

I would really love to see them do a long 50-100 comic issue arc with more time devoted to the story.



Also an interesting observation between this and Meta-Barons is the theme of long lasting deformity/physical alteration being preserved through ritual through families. It's a core part of Meta-Barons from the start; but raises its head in this series at the very end.

 

[maeda]

Yeah epic scale they do like, deluxe editions, big formats, and they do have an audience in the US
I don't follow them so much as before, simply because they released all Moebius they could
So i'm not sure about their current releases, but before, their focus was exclusively on European reissues or translations, and european books are bigger, with detailed artwork, with complete story arc (they call it volumes), and tend to have much more words per panel.
It's a format that works well in my opinion, when it's done right.

 

[Overread]

Aye I see a fair few French comics on Comixology that look fantastic in scope but are not translated. The US method does work, but can be overly simplistic at times - I think it favours a bulk of issues so early series can feel rather light. I think that's why the DC/Marvel recycle so many super-heroes because it means that whilst your series is only 10 comics long its got hundreds behind it to give it depth and weight, even if the new 10 issue series is re-writing the whole thing.