Fireborn #1: Angst, Cringe, Repeat

Fireborn #1 is a giant-sized first issue set in the same world as Curt Pires’ and Luca Casalanguida’s Lost Fantasy. It’s 56 pages, which is a solid read for the $4.99 cover price the comic has. Even while the first eight or nine of those pages are just retelling the same tease that readers might have seen back in the last few pages of Lost Fantasy #5 in November last year.

Despite being aptly marketed as “giant-size,” Fireborn takes quite a while for its plot to begin actually doing anything. What the entire issue accomplishes in those 50+ pages is about the same as or less than what an industry-standard 24-32 page comic, including the advertisements, is able to do.

The storyline itself isn’t anything too original here. Teenager gets a strange artifact that the bad guys want. The artifact gives the teenager superpowers (in this case it’s a dragon egg, but the concept of a MacGuffin still applies). On its own that kind of story would be fine. It’s how the writing weakens the already milquetoast premise that ultimately holds this issue back.

The tone of that writing feels very juvenile. The characters swear at each other constantly and at the slightest provocation, of course. It’s really jarring when you’re reading through the issue’s fantastic artwork and getting engrossed in the level of attention to detail, just to keep getting pulled out of the experience by how silly the writing is. It lacks the charisma of an emotional story like say Invincible or Radiant Black and instead goes straight for the teenage cringe. There are a few scenes where the writing starts to level itself out and present a glimmer of nuance only for the characters to immediately remind you just how edgy they are.

On a completely opposite note, Patrick Mulholland’s artwork is incredible. Pages have a sense of distance to them, and there are consistent details between different pages that give the issue better flow than its writing does. Mulholland has been a cover artist for DSTLRY and Mad Cave Comics. Now cover artists don’t have a wide margin, since it’s a single page that is meant to attract as many buyers as possible. To do that effectively requires precision. Certain scenes and panel layouts in Fireborn #1 show that level of precision, such as a few full-spread pages or one page in particular that uses a ladder of rectangular panels bulging upward, which is able to create an almost 3D fisheye effect on the page.

At times the colors by Mark Dale feel undercooked, like a lot of creativity was splashed onto the page but never given the focus it needed to really blend together. While the colors do capture the tone of the world Curt Pires has been creating since Lost Fantasy #1, they don’t do anything aside from use a lot of pink fire to differentiate this series from Lost Fantasy.