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Jim Henson's The Storyteller: Tricksters #2

Archaia

By Steven LeitmanPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Tricksters #2

Archaia 2021

Written by Jordan Ifueko

Illustrated by Erin Kubo

Lettered by Jim Campbell

* A teen Yoruba village girl summons the great god of mischief, Eshu, to coerce her crush, a dashing hunter, to break up with his sweetheart and marry her instead.

* Eshu agrees to help her, revelling at the chance to wreak havoc with them all... only to find that the village girl had a mischievous plot all of her own.

I adore this issue more than words can describe. Trickster Gods exist throughout every culture in the world and to have this opportunity to learn about them this way, through the very words that one would pass from generation to generation in an oral tradition is something special and extraordinary. The way that this is being told is brilliant beyond belief as it so beautifully takes into account the original way of storytelling and translates it to this medium. Spoken word to written word its so similar when it wants to be and with the ability to recreate a storytelling atmosphere as we see within these pages is literally awe inspiring.

I am loving every moment of how 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. For a change of pace our regular storyteller has been supplanted for an issue thanks to an unexpected visitor to his home. The idea of a story in gratitude for the hospitality shown harkens to a much older age and there’s a sentimentality to it that has all but been forgotten. The character development that we see is fantastic and as much as our three newfound friends as the characters in the featured story are all fleshed out extremely well. The pacing is superb and as it takes u s through the pages revealing the story it really is just so beautifully done.

How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story are woven into, through and around the tale within a tale is so utterly spectacular to see. To be honest it has been many years since I was a wee lad at camp being told stories of our peoples history and past and this reminds me of that so much that memories just flood back and it’s so nice. Then to see how everything here works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as move the story forward is really well done.

The interiors here are much different than I was expecting them to be. Not a bad thing at all either because it reminds me of cave paintings or of hieroglyphs that were how stories used to be told. So the more simplistic style goes hand in hand with oral tradition of the story itself and in this manner I couldn’t be any more enamoured by what we see. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkable eye for storytelling. The colour work is beautiful and as much as we want this to be incredibly vibrant what we get is much more subdued because those are the colours that were available and the indigo dye and how we see that here is stunning.

With travel, even back then, South America and Africa can share Gods and if you don’t believe that they’ve interacted then think again because trade on the western side of South America with the Orient and African nations happened long before others realise. That I am so fully engaged by this story and how I connect the dots and use supposition it should be a realisation of how strong and powerful this story actually is.

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About the Creator

Steven Leitman

Just me talking about the comics I enjoy reading, ones that you might not know exist and spotlighting the indie creators that excite me.

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