The Secret Land #3

The Secret Land #3

Dark Horse Comics 2021

Written by Christofer Emgård

Illustrated by Tomás Aira

Lettered by Mauro Mantella

The Nazis have birthed something unspeakable at their Antarctic base, and Katherine is determined to stop it. On the horizon: the US Navy—and Ben. Through blood, madness, and fear he will fight. No hell will prevent him from reuniting with her.

Well if this isn’t one of the more bizarre books I’ve been reading then I don’t know the meaning of the word bizarre. So it should go without saying that the Nazi’s are a crazy bunch of looney tunes, seriously, and what Professor Hesse has built in the Die Glocken well that’s just out of control at this point and we saw that happen as last issue ended. One of the things that I’ve been enjoying about this is that we don’t see it jumping around a lot. It's pretty much a straight continuous tale issue to issue. Granted Ben needed time to get there but for the most part it holds true. The creatures we see can only come from one of the nine rings of hell, yes Dante reference, as their appearance and demeanour would suggest, at least that is how I see this playing out.

I am a fan of 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 exceptionally well. The character development we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter all continue to flesh these characters out further in some really great ways. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story and managing to snare us into this even further.

I am very much enjoying how this is being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. With new actions creating new avenues to be explored we see new dynamics being created and they add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. Katherine and Julia’s friendship reaches new levels and Ben and his team on scene all really do wonders for this stage of the story. How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved exceptionally well.

The interiors here are really excellent. The linework is clean, crisp and strong and with the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the detail work that we see is really quite impressive. One thing BACKGROUNDS there are creatures, hallways, rooms, gore and filthy violence show it in the backgrounds, I mean really immerse us in the chaos here. How we see the composition within the panels being utilised to create the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is marvellous. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is brilliantly rendered. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading highlights and shadow work shows such a sensational eye for how colour works. The depth and dimension it brings to the work, the facial structures is really stellar work.

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Once again we are left with a sensational cliffhanger ending here. These folks really do make such a team supreme when it comes to storytelling. We dream of collaborations like this and honestly whatever they work on I will be there to read and support because they’ve continuously impressed me with their creativity, imagination, skill and talent. Plus each story and each issue is better than the one before it and that’s precisely what you want to see. The writing is phenomenal, the characterisation is interesting and the interiors are dynamic and intriguing which makes this one of the week's most desirable reads.