LEGENDS: THE ENCHANTED #0

LEGENDS: THE ENCHANTED #0

CREATED, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY:
Nick Percival

LETTERERS: Richard Starkings &
Comicraft's Jimmy Betancourt

Warning: Contains Spoilers

What can I say about this comic that’ll grab your attention right off the bat?

How about this: it’s disturbing, but I think I like being disturbed.

Nick Percival’s Legends: The Enchanted is about a world filled with the fairy tales most everyone is familiar with, except that the characters have grown up and been twisted by their experiences. Or perhaps twisted by their creator’s experiences? This world is violent, it’s filthy, people live in fear both of the monsters that terrorize them and of the fantastic beings who protect them. The Enchanted are twisted re-imaginings of centuries-old characters beaten, but not broken, by Percival’s imagination into new shapes. They have fantastic powers, as well as magic charms that effectively make them immortal.

As an introductory slash teaser, this comic only gives us brief glimpses of several different characters and a fleeting idea of how most of them fit into this world. The first of the Enchanted we meet is Jack the Giantkiller, of “Jack and the Beanstalk” fame. A roving, motorcycle riding vigilante who kills giants for money, Jack shows us right off the bat how violent and gritty this world Percival has dreamed up can be. We meet Pinocchio, writhing in pain as he’s tortured to death by a hideously deformed creature known as the hag. We also meet Red Riding Hood, gathering flowers and slaughtering cybernetic werewolves; she’s not the scared little girl we’ve known in the past.

Percival’s writing is hard to judge fairly from this book; since we’re really reading several very short stories, it’s mostly dialogue. What we do read though is compelling enough to pique interest in the upcoming Legends: The Enchanted graphic novel.

The art, on the other hand, shows is right up front what Percival can do. It’s dark, gritty and at times frighteningly realistic considering the subject matter. Each panel is a swirl of color mixing the hues of pale, sickly flesh with vibrant background colors or the splash of blood as Jack the Giantkiller slays a jilted giantess. Even if you hated Percival’s writing, which you won’t, you’ll love the artwork as it could tell the story all by itself.

Let me sum it up this way: pick this up! You can’t go wrong for a buck.

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