Part Thorgal, part Game of Thrones, but with plenty of its alternate version of history, Lake of Fire is a unique coming-of-age story, injected with the supernatural and the science-fictiony. Its protagonists, one Theobald of Champagne and one Hugh of Blois, are two young men reminiscent of college bound teenagers, except their destination isn't an institution of higher learning, but the bloody battle fields of the Crusades in the year 1220 A.D. When they are asked by the powerful Lord Montfort to join an expedition with additional knights and guards to inspect some strange occurrences in the small, distant village of Montaillou, the two (presumptive) heroes seem to have bitten off more than they can chew. This mission is suicide as much as it is the liberation of evil or the exploration of alleged heresy.
This new fantasy themed comic, from writer Nathan Fairbairn and artist Matt Smith, is a throwback to the Bande Dessinee works of decades past. The group of knights assigned to liberate a small village here is similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger's gang of soldiers/mercenaries who ventured on a secret operation in a faraway jungle, without realizing that they've fallen prey to a predatory alien from another planet. The monsters in Lake of Fire, resembling a crossbreed between those from the Alien and Tremors movie franchises, are equally brutal and merciless: when they bite into their victims, they peel of flesh just as easily as they rip off limbs.
Smith's illustrations impressively convey the chaotic clash between these extra terrestrial beasts and their human counterparts in an intense climactic scene of carnage. The payoff is all the sweeter since the human qualities of Fairbairn's characters have grown on us - some are fallible heroes, others are sympathetic villains - in this extra-long (44 pages) premiere issue. Lake of Fire #1 is an exciting intro to this fantasy-slash-science-fiction-adventure, which I hope will be around for along time to come.
A-
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