Twin Worlds #1 & #2
Action Lab
Writer: Rami Al-Ashqar
Art: Jethro Morales & Bryan Magnaye
Twin Worlds mixes right off the bat various elements of science fiction and fantasy when two extremely different cultures collide after a portal leads humans from Earth, know as Earthers, to the world of Tassaroth. There the Earthers, well-armed with all kinds of battle spaceships and guns, subjugate the Tassonites in order to make a profit off of their resources.
The first chapter picks up with an incursion from Vin Raja, the Darukin of the land of Drakkara, attacking a group of Earther soldiers. We get to witness what could happen if a giant dragon was used to attack a metal-gear kind of machine and boy, oh boy, this comic kicks off greatly. The Earthers are subdued and among them are found some Zila men, Zila being a tribe native from Tassaroth. The story then cuts to the public square of Drakkara where the Zila are executed for working with the enemy. This is when we are vaguely introduced to our protagonists. The twins, Rea and Rakkan, both grandchildren of Vin Raja, who, despite showing them some care, does not properly recognize them as members of the royal family. You see, Kayla, Raja’s daughter and the mother of the twins, conceived them with a yet unknown Earther, and because of that, the children were born without the characteristic pointy ears of the Tassonite people.
Although it may look like a lot of background knowledge is needed due to how rich the lore of this new world already is in the first issue, it all comes quite easily to the reader. I honestly have never seen this much backstory contained in such an elegant manner in merely ten pages or so. I’m obligated to compliment Rami Al-Ashqar’s writing. Exposition is done masterfully by the writer in a way that it feels extremely pertinent to the flow of the plot. Al-Ashqar also shows from such a choice of storytelling that Twin Worlds is supposed to be a saga. Our main characters, the Vin Twins, are barely shown in the first issues but they are promised to become far greater and more important throughout the series.
Jethro Morales did the line art for the comic and he appears to be more fond of the Tassaroth elements of the story than that of Earth’s. What I mean by that is when the comic is at Tassaroth the whole scene just looks richer. There are more details to the backgrounds and characters than there are to those in an Earther ship. The best of the Earther technology we get to see is at the very beginning of issue #1 and the scene also takes place in Tassaroth. This isn’t by any means a bad thing, of course. It could reflect how the Earthers are blindly attacking such beautiful land and making it dull just for profit. The colors, by Magnaye, also reinforce that impression. In the Earther ship, all we get are tones of blue and grey while on Drakkara the setting looks straight out of a painting of Greece. And the Tassonites all wear different colored garments, even though all the Drakkara military show the colors of their homeland, they mostly do it differently from the next one.
Twin Worlds was a great surprise for me. I’m not the biggest fan of epic sagas but the boldness of combining science fiction and fantasy is always an interesting hook. The storytelling of this comics’ team is incredibly well aligned and I sure hope it gets a long run so we can see what will be of little Vin Rea and Vin Rakkan.
Twin Worlds
Twin Worlds was a great surprise for me. I'm not the biggest fan of epic sagas but the boldness of combining science fiction and fantasy is always an interesting hook. The storytelling of this comics' team is incredibly well aligned and I sure hope it gets a long run so we can see what will be of little Vin Rea and Vin Rakkan.
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