Fuel for the Fire

Writer - Doug Beyer

Story - Doug Beyer and Jeremy Jarvis

Illustrators - Christopher Mueller, Andrew Robinson & Lucio Parrillo

Letterers - Brian Dumas

Art Director - Jeremy Jarvis

Based on characters by Brady Dommermuth and Aleksi Briclot

Released November 2008

SUMMARY

You can find it here 

Part one is a retelling of Chandra's Ultimate, the first webcomic released during Lorwyn block, but with a new page at the start and at the end. It still just covers Chandra running away from the cops after having stolen a scroll, but now ends with police finding a planeswalker symbol made of ash that tells them she is still alive.

Part two has them hiring Jace via the Consortium (more on them in a future review) to chase Chandra down. He does. They fight. Part three: They fight some more. In the end Jace takes the scroll and Chandra's memories of it. But we see she's made copies.

REVIEW

Not much to this one, just a chase scene we've seen already and a big fight. There's some neat turns in there, Jace makes good use of his illusions, but as a story it doesn't have much substance. It's just here as a tie-in to the Jace vs. Chandra duel deck, and to introduce the scroll that will become important later on. At this point all we hear about it is Chandra saying "this is not just any fire spell ... it's quite the trick, let me tell you" though, so this comic could've just been left as a one-off story with no greater importance than giving Chandra a new spell. It'll be become much more than that though.

The Hunter and the Veil

 

Writers - Doug Beyer & Jenna Helland

Story - Doug Beyer, Jenna Helland & Brady Dommermuth

Illustrators - Jason Shawn Alexander, Paul Lee & Alex Horley-Orlandelli

Letterers - Jen Page & Kevin Smith

Art Director - Jeremy Jarvis

Based on characters by Brady Dommermuth and Aleksi Briclot

Released between July 30 and August 13 2008

SUMMARY

The comic can be found here.

If you do want a summary though: Kotophed has sent Liliana to go get the Chain Veil. On her way there she is attacked by beasts, which she kills. Garruk finds the corpses and goes after her. They fight, but Liliana grabs the Veil, puts a curse on Garruk and leaves.

Planeshopping era retrospective, Planeswalker era preview

Back in the Dissension Online review I said I was saving the planeshopping era overview until after Eventide. Well, now we're finally there, let's see what typifies this era, and how well it preformed. And let's also look ahead a little to see what's coming up.

Looking Back

The first thing to notice is the differences from previous periods we've covered.

The Armada comics, the Weatherlight Saga and the Otaria Saga were of course all story arcs first and foremost, which gave them a certain momentum that kept them on a single course until that story was done. We've seen that near the end of the Weatherlight Saga there were some red flags in regards to quality and continuity, but on the whole it barreled along nicely, not making any drastic changes. Only when the saga ended did quality and continuity take a sudden plunge. As a result we can tell a pretty coherent story about each saga's story, quality and continuity.

With the planeshopping era though, things are all over the place. You've got Mirodin continuing a lot of issues of the Otaria period, Kamigawa suddenly doubling down on story and flavor, Ravnica dialing that back to tell the trilogy most isolated from larger continuity of all (at the time at least), only for Coldsnap and Time Spiral to go deeper into continuity than ever before, with Lorwyn then doing a complete U-turn and aping Ravnica in its self contained-ness. Quality also varies wildly, with the Mirrodin cycle being pretty universally panned, but Kamigawa and Ravnica often being highly praised. And reviewing the era as a story... well, good luck. Technically Time Spiral block ties it all together, but only does so through a few stray hints in Doug Beyer articles on Dissension and a list in the Future Sight Players' Guide. If you read the novels the only connection is the reappearance of Night's Reach, as the Time Spiral trilogy is much more a sequel to the Weatherlight Saga, and the Ice Age & Legends II cycles.

This is of course a result of the "hopping" nature of the planeshopping era. Every trilogy covers a different world, thus making it possible to do stories very different from one another. Heck, if it all tied together too tightly it might result in making the multiverse feel unrealistically small.

With all that said though, there are certain common threads in this era, though we need to look beyond the content of the stories to see them.