Self/Made #1 - Image Comics

SELF/MADE #1, December 2018

“Introducing a new creative team everyone will be talking about” this twenty-four page periodical by “Image Comics” must have seemed like ‘manna from heaven’ for those within its 11,135 strong audience who had ever played “Dungeons & Dragons”, and wanted to read a book which replicated an authentic fantasy tabletop game feel. Indeed, up until the point where the disagreeably arrogant Brycemere stupidly invites his travelling party’s death before the crossbow bolts of the Skrellians, Mat Groom’s script for Issue One of “Self/Made” genuinely seems to play out like one of Gary Gygax’s Early Seventies scenarios, complete with blood-soaked backstory, an unlikely alignment of multi-skilled heroes, a black-hearted sorcerer and a suitably formidable quest upon which rests the fate of “this great kingdom” and “the many races of Arcadia”.

Fortunately however, this analogy doesn’t simply end with Amala Citali’s fatal felling at the feet of an Egyptian-looking Pharaoh, as just like any other good role-playing adventure, “The Final Contradiction” provides its central cast with the opportunity to repeatedly replay its narrative and explore an alternative course of action to the one which led to their band’s untimely demise; “…Very well, as you appear so well versed in the ways of these savages, we shall follow your lead in this singular instance.” This enjoyable plot twist arguably completely captures the spirit of Dave Arneson’s dice-rolling miniature wargame to the point where some readers could probably imagine a group of players reconvening their band over subsequent nights so as to overcome their previous attempt’s terminal tribulations.

Of course, owing to the storyline’s ‘real world’ being set some time in the near future, the Australian author’s lead gamer is actually simply reloading a computer programme from the last checkpoint rather than using the traditional pen and paper method of dungeon crawling. But this technological revelation towards the end of the comic doesn’t debatably dilute its engagingly palpable nostalgic aura in the least, and actually makes for a far more understandably apt conclusion when Citali repeatedly kills the haughty prince for failing to explain why Teronak couldn’t “use the power to bring my people back” to life following the townsfolks' decimation at the magic-user’s hands.

Similarly as successful as this publication’s story-telling is Eduardo Ferigato’s proficient pencilling, which dynamically captures both the sweeping grandeur of the great kingdom’s multi-raced medieval world, as well as the selfish superciliousness of Brycemere. In fact, despite the vast majority of this book’s interiors not containing any sound effects, one can still hear the clang of swords, or ‘thunk’ of a well-aimed arrow due to the dynamic nature of the Brazilian illustrator’s drawings.

Writer: Mat Groom, Artist: Eduardo Ferigato, and Colors: Marcelo Costa