Ocean of Ink: Once and Future

Review by Ed O.

Welcome to “Ocean of Ink,” where I, your humble Book Kaiju, have finally gotten around to reading my giant backlog of fantasy comic books and I’m going to make it everyone’s problem.  That’s right; I’m actually going to start reading all those graphic novels I’ve been collecting for years.  Going forward this column may be on entire series, specific volumes, or issues.  I will use a very secret and scientific method to decide (in other words I’m really just making this all up as I go).

Today we’re looking at Once & Future with story by Kieron Gillen, art by Dan Mora, and color by Tamra Bonvillain.  This series ran for a total of thirty issues and is collected in five volumes.  This time I’ll be going over the entire run.

What’s it about?

A bunch of Brexiteers want to resurrect King Arthur to make Britain Great Again.  But don’t worry; King Arthur isn’t going to align himself with the far right.  He’s a medieval king; he’s going to slaughter everyone equally!  He’s chivalrous like that.

Thankfully there’s a group of people that have the knowledge and the skill to stop evil, zombie Arthur.  Unfortunately it’s an octogenarian grandmother, Bridgette, and her sweet, but sheltered, grandson, Duncan.  At least Bridgette has a lot of guns and Duncan is a former rugby player.  It’s up to them to deal with the stories of Britain’s past coming to life and finally do something about that entire family trauma they’ve been ignoring. 

I don’t want to go into more detail than that, because I loved this series.  The art is great.  Mora does a wonderful job in character design.  Everyone looks unique and different.  Supernatural beings look cool and creepy.  Don’t want to spoil too much, but a certain merry thief shows up and his design is just fire.  The art is crisp and clean, and most importantly to me, comprehensible.  There’s no moment where I found myself wondering “Wait, what’s going on here?” because the art was muddled or unclear. 

The characters themselves are a bit of a mixed bag.  At first it appears that Duncan is going to be the main protagonist, but in truth he’s only the audience surrogate.  Yes, he has a character arc and there is growth, but also he’s not very complicated.  He’s a nice guy and he stays a nice guy.  Which is fine in real life, but in the story it just means he’s kind of boring.  Of course, there is an in-story reason why he’s just a good, uncomplicated person.  However justified, a boring character is still boring. 

Then there’s Bridgette, the eighty year old grandma with more guns than Texas.  She’s actually the hero of the story.  She’s the one that knows what’s going on.  She’s the experienced soldier in this war on the supernatural.  And wow is she complicated.  Her family issues can best be described as “Jerry Springer Best of Compilation.”  She’s a classic jerk with a heart of gold, though.  Never willing to let someone innocent die if she can help it, she’s also willing to make sacrifices others might find excessive.

The highlight of the comic for me is definitely what it has to say about stories.  Gillen makes it clear from the very beginning that King Arthur is trapped in a story.  He must arise, gather his knights, recreate Camelot, and hunt for the Grail.  It’s a cycle he can’t break and that is a weakness the heroes and villains can exploit.  For example Brexiteers create for Arthur a man who can play the role of Galahad, while the heroes have a Percival surrogate.

If you remember your Arthurian legends, then you know that both those knights find the Grail.  Those myths are mutually exclusive, because they were created and written by different cultures at different times.  So part of the series are these two knight surrogates fighting to see who’s “story” takes precedence. 

At another point a character takes on the role of Gawain by beheading the Green Knight.  For the rest of the story they are effectively immortal as they must face the Green Knight once again in combat a year and a day from their first confrontation.  That countdown looms large throughout the narrative.

Then there’s the fact that the legend of King Arthur has been influenced by the original Welsh, then French Romances, and British Empire.  These stories are so mutually exclusive you could almost imagine that they are discussing different Arthurs entirely.  Wouldn’t it be wild if in Volume 5 there was a giant battle between a series of different Arthurs representing British history and how the British view themselves?  Trust me; it is as epic as it sounds.

Once & Future does a wonderful job of showing that stories follow Newton’s Third Law.  Yes, we shape stories.  We write them down, we speak them into existence, and we build upon them.  Stories also shape us.  They influence how we view our world.  They tell us what is important and we value.  We inject our virtues into a story, and later those stories inject those virtues into the minds of their readers.  King Arthur was a brilliant choice to highlight the power of stories.

I loved this series.  I devoured all six volumes in a single weekend.  I’ve already thrown a few more of Gillen’s works into the Ocean of Ink for later reading. 

If you love dark fantasy, or Arthurian legends, then definitely give Once & Future a chance.  I promise you won’t regret it.