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A review by quetzelish
Black Road, Volume 1: The Holy North by Garry Brown, Brian Wood, Dave McCaig
4.0
Gotta start off with the disclaimer, I won this in the goodreads giveaway and to be honest, I would never have picked this up otherwise. It didn't look like it would interest me but after reading it, I have to say it's really interesting. Black Road is supposedly a "mystery" set in some part of scandinavia during the Roman christian time period. I'm vague on the setting and time period as this is a comic who's approach to time and location is vague at best, which really adds to the empty, lost feeling of the setting. You can piece together just enough to get your bearings but nothing more. No hyper-specific time boxes (which usually are pretty useless) and other than town names when there is a town, not many location titles either. Usually the vague, LATER and BEFORE, are annoyingly pointless and just serve to confuse but here they actually work, as specifics don't matter.
The art is rough, not polished at all, but clear in its direction and while the art style may make scenes feel muddy, it fits the tone of the book well. Plus, the colors are vibrant, even though this is a very grounded story. I'm not going to talk about the story because most of it is set up in this volume. Why is Magnus on this quest, who are his companions, what lies at the end of the Black Road? These are all questions I think will slowly be answered in subsequent volumes and I think I might pick them up. The pacing is a little slow though and I do wish that there were a few more answers than questions at this point but many times, that's just the nature of a mystery.
The art is rough, not polished at all, but clear in its direction and while the art style may make scenes feel muddy, it fits the tone of the book well. Plus, the colors are vibrant, even though this is a very grounded story. I'm not going to talk about the story because most of it is set up in this volume. Why is Magnus on this quest, who are his companions, what lies at the end of the Black Road? These are all questions I think will slowly be answered in subsequent volumes and I think I might pick them up. The pacing is a little slow though and I do wish that there were a few more answers than questions at this point but many times, that's just the nature of a mystery.