Prepare to enter a world of twisted fable and horror in Nick Percival’s newest comic book creation, Legends: The Enchanted.
Jack the Giant Slayer is a pill-popping freak whose motorcycle runs on giant blood. Little Red Riding Hood wanders the Bionic Woodlands, chopping the mutant wolf-freaks that stalk her into tiny slices with her ever-present scythes. Poor Pinocchio is the prisoner of The Hag, a hideous monster that has already murdered Geppetto. This is a world that straddles an uneasy and constantly blurring border between magic and technology: a place of witches and giants, but also cybernetics and gunfire. This is where childhood dreams fester and rot and thirst for blood.
My own personal tastes have always run toward the macabre, and Legends: The Enchanted pulled me in from page one. Although reinventing fairy tale characters isn’t new by any means, Percival’s own particularly skewed vision brings a gothic sensibility to these familiar childhood characters that both thrills and revolts. Jack and the gang aren’t good guys. They’re just tougher than the other monsters that roam the fairy tale wasteland. You can’t exactly root for them, but they’re certainly fun to follow.
Written and illustrated by Percival, this is a perfectly delicious slice of hell…the kind of book that you’ll want to share with anyone who ever wondered what the dark side of Never Never land might be like.
Issue Zero is due in April from publisher Radical Comics. Look for it at your favorite local comic shop.
