REVIEW: Battle Chasers #10

If you’re looking for an action-packed comic that is beautifully illustrated, amazingly colored, and filled to the brim with cool explosions and wonderful character designs, Battle Chasers is the comic for you. This being the 10th issue in the story is a bit difficult to follow if you haven’t read the previous installments, but the amazing art by Ludo Lullabi is worth it nonetheless. The way they render backgrounds, their impeccable lighting choices, and character designs make this a worthwhile read. I particularly love how both pretty and tough Red Monika is, with her realistic curvy physique and her lion’s mane of red hair. She gives all the femme fatale vibes you could want, and let me tell you, the fallen Martial Paladin Garrison is just as much a hunk as she is. Together, they are running away from the new Martial Paladins, who are composed of several evil monsters that want nothing but to bring them to their doom.

Speaking of the Bounty Hunting Martial Paladins, this gang of evildoers is astonishing! Each one has a very distinct design, and the use of contrasting shape and size between them makes each one that much more unique. I think my favorite design out of this badass band of bandits has to be Grave. The giant monster has a very similar physique to Hulk, but imagine he got eaten by a zombie and can shape-shift his arm into an equally enormous axe, and you have Grave. Even though each of them has very cool designs, this guy just looks awesome! One thing I can’t fail to mention is the wonderful use of red on blue color scheme to make the characters pop against the background, as well as to differentiate the good guys from the bad guys. It’s quite interesting because while Garrison is dressed fully in blue to show that he’s indeed a good guy, we have Red Monika, not only having the name red but also sporting a huge head of red hair and some red pants to go along with her attire, and Monika being a fugitive turned “good.” I absolutely love the neutrality of the shirt being white, which makes her sort of like an in-between character, making you wonder. Is she really good, or is she a little bad?

The backgrounds here are so good too. I absolutely adore the animals that our characters interact with. Even though we see creatures like frogs, horses, crows, squirrels, deer, and bears, they are rendered in such a way that feels gritty, magical, and downright creepy. Which lets you know that this is not your run-of-the-mill earthen landscape; there’s definitely something spooky in this world. The environment itself gives me Mike Mignola mixed with Jeff Smith vibes. Like picture if the Bone world was five times scarier, you would have this comic’s landscape, and I’m all for it. Oh, and the action scenes! They are a blast! Literally! Many of the characters in this comic use what look like magical guns as weapons, and the gun battles are downright exciting! The red explosions against blue and yellow backgrounds are to die for, and heck, a couple of characters literally die this issue, so there you go.

If I have to complain about anything, anything at all, it has to be that the story itself is big, and there are several things happening at the same time. That unless you are an active reader of this comic, picking up a single issue in the middle of the run might be a bad idea. Yet this can be a good thing because the writing itself is really good, and the art and characters are so beautiful that if you pick up this comic, I think you would do yourself a great service if you picked up the back issues as well or went in for the Trade Paperback

altogether. This is one of those stories that I would have in my collection as a big book with all the different issues combined so I can binge-read the whole thing in one sitting. So all in all, being a big story is not particularly a bad thing.

Lastly, I’d like to talk about the lettering. Richard Starkings and Tyler Smith go hard on this one. From the dialogue text and balloons to the awesome SFX, there is not a thing that they let go unnoticed. It is quite superb work through and through. I would have loved to see maybe one or two panels with the sound FX rendered in the same style as the actual inside art, but other than that, this is awesome, and the lettering adds a dimension to the story that is often not done right. So kudos for the great lettering. Also, I’d like to go back to the art and highlight the awesome full-page illustrations this book has. There are two full-page illustrations and one full spread illustration and countless half-page illustrations, and all of them are outstanding. Straight up poster-worthy! One cool thing that I also noticed is that this page comic uses very thin white panel borders laid on top of full-page illustrations and has no white gutters at all. Which is crazy and feels like you’re watching the action unfold on a second-by-second basis versus a more laid-back story, and I think that works wonderfully for this kind of story that is full of action sequences. I would venture to say that each page is, in fact, a full-page illustration, but that is just me being a semantical fanboy.

All in all, this is a really good story, and I’m excited to see Issue 11 come through. They left Garrison and the band of Martial Paladins on a huge cliffhanger battle, and I can’t wait to see them tear each other to pieces. I also appreciate the color change from blues and reds to yellows and greens used to differentiate the two sections of the book between the story that was happening inside the dark forest and the one that is going on inside the village. This is such a good book!!! Ahhh!! You need to read it honestly; I loved it so much. There’s even a giant magical robot in it, and he looks so good! Just go get it!

Writing: 5 Stars
Art: 5 Stars
Colors: 5 Stars

Overall: 5 Stars

Writing by Joe Madureira
Art & Colors by Ludo Lullabi
Lettering by Richard Starkings & Comicraft’s Tyler Smith
Cover art by Joe Madureira & Ludo Lullabi

Variant Covers by J.Scott Campbell, Humberto Ramos, Chris Bachalo, Mirka Andolfo, Skottie Young
Published by Image Comics

Reviewed by Antonio “Mabs”