REVIEW: ANGELIC TP VOL 01 HEIRS & GRACES

Lore matters. It has always mattered in comics, but the stakes for the logic and continuity of lore in comics have become more and more vital as the role that lore plays in video games, film, and television has been enhanced in our super-pop cultural moment. Simon Spurrier, Caspar Wijngaard, Jim Campbell, and Emma Price, the creative team behind Angelic (Image Comics), have a formidable aesthetic grasp on the phenomenon of lore that helps to make Angelic one of the most distinct comic books on the market.

The world of Angelic is a post-apocalyptic one. According to the lore of a small community of genetically enhanced monkeys, “the makers”“ ”“ human beings — were driven from the world by the devil “AY”“- an artificial intelligence system. The enhanced monkeys, who sometimes refer to themselves as monks, are blindly loyal and subservient to the makers. They worship them and take as gospel the makers“ lore that claims they will return to rule the earth again. The monks are conscripted to protecting their turf ”“ and some of the makers“ technology from robot dolphins and other beings who represent the tyranny of “AY.”“

Its an impressive, imaginative build-out for a post-apocalyptic world, and readers can get a compacted sense of this creative team“s brilliance in the first Angelic TPB out this week.

All is ok in this strange world until the hero of our story, a young flying monkey named Qora starts to ask questions about her purpose in what to her seems to be a dreary life that drones on unintelligibly. She wants to know why “girlmonks”“ cannot learn to fight like their male counterparts; she wants to know what the glowboxes and the divine lights are for; but most urgently she wants to know why ”“ why the monks do what they do.

In the community of genetically enhanced monkeys that blindly follow the lore of the makers, to ask “why”“ is anathema to their leaders, to their community and to their gods ”“ the makers themselves. Qora understands this but her desire to know why ”“ to know the whys of her world outstrip any fear she has of physical (or mental) punishment. And this fearlessness is what animates Qora and charges her with the awesome responsibility of being the readers“ guide through the strange, and at times macabre world of Angelic.

Early on in this series it becomes clear that lore is actually under fire ”“ as a concept but also as a script for the world in which Qora lives. The creators of Angelic have established one of the most compelling constructions of lore ”“ in any media ”“ in recent times only to spend a significant amount of the book“s time, space, and creative energy deconstructing that lore ”“ especially the idea that the benevolent makers imbued the monks with their awesome powers out of some sense of altruism.

Language is the key investment in the lore of Angelic and one of the tools that the creative team uses to play the deconstruction game in that world. The lingua franca of the enhanced beings ”“ animal and robot ”“ is a study in the value of concentrated efforts by talented wordsmiths for making a comic book pop. There“s no glossary here ”“ and no glossary needed as the language that Si Spurrier and co. have created is utterly intuitive; readers can read it/see it and know the meanings of these strange new terms either because of their not so alien orthography or because of the carefully built cultural contexts within which each scene, every panel of this comic is poignantly rendered. If for some reason you“ve been sleeping on Angelic ”“ or if it is just one of those titles that you“ve been meaning to pull but has gotten lost in the shuffle of all the really good comics that are in the marketplace right now, now might be the time to rectify that oversight. 4/5.

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(W) Simon Spurrier (A/CA) Jan Wijngaard