The Sacrificers #15 // Review
A god has arrived at the gates. He is Rokos: god of the sun. He has arrived as a streak of light from the darkened sky. There is a deafening explosion and he arrives. The sky splits like parchment. One moment all is dark. The next moment it is radiant. No chariot of gold. No herald’s fanfare. He’s merely standing there like he couldn’t be anywhere else. They ask him why he has arrived. He tells them to open the gate and find out. And they WILL find out in The Sacrificers #15. Writer Rick Remender an artist Max Fiumara conclude the latst plot arc of a refreshing, new fantasy series.
Rokos, god of the sun is upset. One might think that he would simply smite anything that would upset him. Fire is kind of a big deal so he would be kind of a powerful deity. The foreman who has cvome to meet him wishes to know the meaning of his anger. Rokos is frustrated, but the foreman isn’t feigning ignorance about the situation. He really DOESN’T know what is going on. This makes matters all the more complicated as Rokos requests to see the children. When the door to their sanctuary is opened, Rokos will be quite angry...
Remender lets everything loose in the 15th issue. There’s been a whole lot of pent-up stress and aggression that’s been lurking aorunnd the edges of everything as it all progresses. The big showdown betweenRokos and...the world is every bit as intense as it needs to be to realy get across the idea of a god smiting everything in existence. The slow lead-in to it as aggression breaks-out is remarkably well-articulated. As strange as it may seem, this wouldn’t be a terribly bad place for a new. reader to start as Remender has done such a good job of delivering a single, concise, decisive narrative offensive that explodes across the page.
Fiumara is handed the same tiype of challenge that so many other comic book artist have been handed over the years: show real, cosmic-level power uneleached onto the page and make the reader feel it between and beyond the panels. Fiumara shakes the page with Rokos’ rage in a way that feels every bit as intense as it should. The ridiculously overwhelming nature of what’s going on on the page is devastatingly intense.
Remender knows exactly what kind of artist he’s working with in Fiumara. He might not have been quite so comfortable handing over an issue like this to an artist who didn’t clearly have a sharp handle on how to bring the big, overwhelming power to the page the way Fiumara does. There had been so many attempts to bring this sort of thing to the page over the years. Real cosmic-level fantasy conflict is so very, very difficult to render. Fiumara has done a beautiful job of it.
