X-O Manowar #7

X-O Manowar #7

Valiant Entertainment 2021

Written by Dennis Hopeless

Pencilled by Emilio Laiso

Inked by Raffaele Forte

Coloured by Ruth Redmond

Lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

A bond destroyed. Power wielded recklessly. A deadly force on the attack. X-O Manowar’s world will be shattered.

Finally what I’ve been waiting for! Not quite the way I was expecting to but that’s okay because Dennis can surprise me continually and I'll never complain but celebrate that he’s able to continually keep me on my toes. While I have been waiting for this I had no idea how this was going to occur so seeing this issue play out the way that it does is absolutely thrilling. All the moving parts that we’ve been seeing playing themselves out finally come to a head here and begin to really coalesce into this hard hitting slap in the face story that we’ve all been waiting for. The fact that Shanhara is finding a way to get to Aric and Desmond is making me happy and I feel like bursting out in song. On a side note you’d think with the sheer number of times that the suit has shut down in the middle of a fight should have set off a lot more alarm bells than it has been doing.

I am totally digging 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 impeccably rendered. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does such a magnificent job in bringing these personalities to the forefront. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story the stronger my opinion that this issue needs more pages grows.

I’m really rather impressed with the way that this is being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. I’m enjoying seeing how the layers open up new avenues to be explored and how this adds some great new depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is immaculately achieved.

Before I get into the interiors I wanna say this. With the amount of times the suit has shut down we should have seen the full monty here on several occasions oh and why isn’t he hairy as all get out? He’s from a time when hairy chests, backs and buttocks were the norm and honestly he isn’t who’d care if he were hairy. Get with it people heh. The linework is fantastic and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the attention to detail that we see throughout the book is fantastic! How we see backgrounds utilised to enhance and expand the moments while also working within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a really rather remarkable eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows this sensational eye for how colour works.

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This series has been utterly amazing and I love that while it pays homage to Aric’s past everything we see is his life now moving forward. That he is encountering people and situations that he’s unfamiliar with and that Dennis manages to really get the reader invested, engaged and active in the story is phenomenal stuff. I also like that this arc is playing itself in a natural feeling kind of way instead of being forced or rushed to fit in a certain amount of issues. Aric has gone from serviceable hero to a book that cannot be missed and this is thanks to this amazing writing, strong, interesting characterisation and of course these bloody amazing interiors.