God of War: Fallen God #2

God of War: Fallen God #2

Dark Horse Comics 2021

Written by Chris Roberson

Illustrated by Tony Parker

Coloured by Dave Rapoza

Lettered by Jimmy Betancourt of Comicraft

A man cannot escape his destiny. Then again, Kratos is no mere man—he is a GOD—and he will stop at nothing to escape the bonds of his predestination. Neither prophecy, nor ancient text, nor manipulation of Athena can stop his single-minded mission to free himself from his past, from his future, and from the suffering of his present. Is he a man? Or is he the monster other monsters fear? A god-weapon forged of murderous rage? An ugly tool of destiny itself? Pray NOT to the gods to save you, for they may send Kratos.

I think what Chris is doing here is pretty darn marvellous! I mean seeing Kratos at this stage is interesting and he really is being this completely washed out, washed up and lost individual and it adds these layers to his character that really makes him much more human and interesting to me. There are a lot things going on in this issue but they all centre around one thing which I’ll get to later but I like what we’re seeing because this isn’t something we’d normally see in a story and that alone is worth more than all the tea in China.

I like the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. This also ties into the character development because while we see him actually whining a lot and feeling sorry for himself because he’s immortal and all those he’s cared for he’s watched die. So when we see him get to locations and meet people it really does kind of put things in perspective for the reader if not for Kratos. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story, introducing a character to the story as well as what I had originally thought of as an Egyptian god is really rather quite nice to see.

How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story reveal themselves and grow stronger is exceedingly well done. Even with the self throw pity party we ge a lot of good solid moments of know who Kratos is. The way that everything works together and how it creates the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is fun to see.

The linework we see in the interiors is beautifully laid down. How we see the varying weights being utilised to create the detail work is marvellous and that stone statue for example is stunning. Now i do wish there were backgrounds being utilised, I feel a bit cheated that there really aren’t any. In some ways it works and in others not so much but we still see some great depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book. I love how we see the utilisation of the page layouts, they’re pretty uniquely utilised, and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a superb eye for storytelling. The colour work is fantastic and how the various hues and tones within the colours are being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows some really nice skill and talent.

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This has a lot of character driven moments and it works on so many different levels because somehow, some way we both empathise with him and think he’s a petulant child at the same time. Then again Chris is a superb writer and has talent and skill in spades so that pretty much anything he’s involved in is going to be something special.