Posted in: Comics, Review | Tagged: dark age: fallen idol, fantasy, indie comics spotlight, sci-fi, torey nelson

Indie Comics Spotlight – Dark Age: Fallen Idol is Summarized Storytelling Done Well

From a civil war comes a king. From that king comes a thriving society. From that society comes peace. From the void of space comes conquerors. From those conquerors comes death and tragedy and a dark age. From that dark age, comes madness. From that madness, the king may yet rise again.

Dark Age: Fallen Idol commits a cardinal sin of storytelling. Almost the entirety of the chapter comes in summarized storytelling. That being said, I'm willing to forgive it for a number of reasons.

Firstly, you can read this comic for free right now at this web address. Secondly, it is a prologue issue intended to set up a world in which the story takes place as opposed to the main story itself. This indicates that the main story will be told in an active voice as opposed to this passive presentation.

It also sets up an interesting premise. A war-tested king has lost his family to invaders, and he has gone mad and encountered what may a malevolent cosmic force promising to help him out of this tragedy. That's a compelling starting point and providing a visual representation of the protagonist's life story does give an extra level of engagement to the reader.

That brings us to writer/artist's Torey Nelson's artwork, which is very good. The lead character has a good visual design which actually strays from the emphasis on human-like features for which many sci-fi stories opt. The mysterious visitor at the end looks quite good too. The world has a lively and popping color palette. The prologue has a great look as a whole.

Dark Age: Fallen Idol is a promising prologue to a larger story yet to come. Once again, it can be read for free at this address. While I still advise against releasing a summarized story as a full "issue" to a comic, Tory Nelson managed to pull this one off. Give it a read.

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