X-O Manowar: Unconquered #3: Pigs of the Roman Empire

Authors Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad (portmanteau code name: Cloonrad; you losers wish you were this cool) slow things down a notch for this issue of X-O Manowar: Unconquered, but that doesn’t mean there’s no action. Quite the opposite: allowing the story room to breathe gives readers time to take stock, get their bearings, and as we hit the halfway mark of this story, get ready to move the needle forward toward the finale.

As established last issue, the fulcrum upon which Unconquered moves is the centuries-ago Visigoths versus Roman Empire conflict, re-imagined on a grand space opera scale. Honestly – the history and myth of Rome is such a rich source of drama and storytelling, its move to the deepest reaches of outer space feels like a no-brainer. And in Cloonan and Conrad’s hands, it fits X-O’s world perfectly: the ultimate warrior (no, not that wrestler) versus his most historically hated foes in perhaps their ultimate form. The stakes feel high and the drama feels higher: exactly what readers want from a cosmic, non-trippy space opera.

An additional wrinkle gets added this issue, though: a future-reading soothsayer spells certain doom for the Aric/Shanhara dyad, which means the end won’t just be standard-fare fisticuffs; real personal stakes now exist for Aric (beyond his loathing of all things Rome, that is). Get ready, folks – the end is gonna be MASSIVE.

The only real complaint on the writing side is the lack of motivation for the assorted Novus Romanus players. So far, they’re a bit one-dimensional – each character playing their role as written for the machine that is the greater plot; not much really in terms of internal motivations. Yet, at least – there’s a plot and heel-turn that is revealed in these pages that looks to add some layers of character development in issues ahead.

Liam Sharp’s art continues to shine throughout. A master of his craft with decades of experience behind him, fans (and Valiant) are extraordinarily lucky to have him at the helm. Sharp’s figures are big, bold, exaggerated – exactly what you’d want from this kind of story. Something bigger than life. It isn’t just the characters that Sharp excels at, though – he brings in a touch of H.R. Geiger this issue to the interiors of the Romanus’ spacecraft that look straight out of Alien. Only two reasonably subjective opportunities present in Sharp’s art: the first is that some of his pages are sparse on panels, leaving a raft of dead space in their wake – possibly a suggestion of the script, possibly an artistic choice – but it leaves a weird taste in the mouth either way, because comics, being a visual medium, naturally abhor large blank spaces. Other readers may object to the overall darkness pervading Sharp’s panels; while effective, it can become a chore to parse out what’s happening in a given panel from time to time. Other than that, Sharp is as good as he ever was – maybe better, even.