Inkblot #4 // Review
There’s a black cat in Egypt. It’s being offered as a gift to a sphinx. This might seem like a simple and earnest gesture, but dealings with powerful beings are rarely simple. Gifts for any magical creature can be difficult...particularly when the gift in question isn’t exactly an ordinary black cat. Emma Kubert and Rusty Gladd’s Inkblot reaches its fourth issue with a further exploration of the nature of the world of Inkblot the cat. Though it largely concerns itself with the relationship between the sphinx and a wizard, Inkblot rests wide-eyed at the center of it all in another enjoyable journey into fantasy.
Actually, it’s ancient Egypt. It’s not the high point of the Pharaohs’ reign, though. Egypt appears to be a vast desert. Two great pyramids can be seen off in the distance. A group wanders a desert looking for contact with a powerful magic. A powerful mage named Xenthos looks to make contact with a sphinx. It’s one of the last. Xenthos seeks survival. In exchange for survival, he’s offering the sphinx a gift: the gift...of a black cat. The sphinx wants something a little more significant to Xenthos...it wants the wizard’s staff.
The episodic rhythm to Emma Kubert’s story continues to develop as a few plot elements get pulled together this issue. The dealings between humans and more powerful beings once again gets another look from a different angle in what appears to be a recurring theme for the series. Without an in-depth look at individual characters, the reader is getting the briefest, climactic moments between people and magic as seen in the company of a wide-eyed cat who has come to be in a world beyond his comprehension. The repetition has been fun, but it’s nice to see Kubert finally begins to circle back to plot points that were introduced at the beginning of the series in a big way.
The art in the fourth issue mixes magic with something altogether more brutal and gruesome. Thus far, the magical elements of the world of Inkblot have seemed graceful and humorous. In the presence of the sphinx, the very real danger in the world of the series settles in in a major way. The power of the sphinx seems suitably overwhelming, and some of the action impressively slashes its way around the page. The intensity of the drama might not always hit the page perfectly, but there are some sharply-delivered moments in the course of the journey from one cover to the other.
Elements introduced at the beginning of the series echo back this issue to some degree of satisfaction. Still, Kubert and Gladd opened the world very, very wide in the first issue, and it will take quite a few chapters before the full scope of the series begins to come into focus. It’s been a great deal of fun thus far. With any luck, Kubert and Gladd will have many, many issues to explore the world of Inkblot. It’s been great fun so far.
