The Four Color Media Monitor

Dread Central announced Image is producing a comic titled Lost Fantasy, supposedly inspired by Final Fantasy, but it uses the horror genre as it's driving force, along with a premise similar to James Tynion's own horror thrillers:

Looking for a comic book series inspired by Final Fantasy? Then look no further than the upcoming comic book series Lost Fantasy, coming soon from Image Comics, writer Curt Pires (Indigo Children), and artist Luca Casalanguida (James Bond).

In Lost Fantasy,
“A magical world lies beneath ours, and first contact was made over a hundred years ago between the two worlds due to a natural disaster, resulting in a schism that allowed monsters to break through. Since then, secret monster slayers, known as The Great Hunters, have been working with global leaders to police the border and to keep our world safe from the creatures that lurk in the shadows. But last night, something broke through, resulting in a mysterious mass killing in Montana, and causing things to shift in a way that will ripple through both worlds. Now it’s up to rookie monster hunter Henry Blackheart to stop it…”

This is looking bad enough already. Pires told them:

As with films, comics always start with a script. For Pires, he knew he wanted a shocking cold open that sucks the reader in and doesn’t let them go.

“I knew I wanted to give the book a cold open that immediately pulled you in and set up the stakes,” he said. “It didn’t take me long to come up with this imagery of this girl covered in blood running through the woods—it’s something that’s just instantly evocative and captured my attention and interest.”

Pires added, “I consider myself the first reader besides being the writer so that is usually a good sign. The hunter she runs into is a red herring of sorts that you’re meant to sort of be afraid of for the little girl and wonder if he’s going to harm her. And then we quickly pull the rug out and establish that what’s coming for her is actually much worse.”

This is sick, and I don't think Final Fantasy's ever been built on themes as nasty as this. So what's Pires trying to prove here?

The awful Comics Beat interviewed Pires, where he confirms the Tynion influences:

JARED BIRD: To those unfamiliar, how would you pitch Lost Fantasy?

CURT PIRES: I’d pitch it as a grounded take on fantasy for fans of East Of West and Something Is Killing The Children. It’s a story about the agents who patrol and protect our world from creatures both mythical and monstrous that attempt to cross over into our world—from a magical world that exists beneath the fabric of our own. There’s a little bit of Harry Potter in there too in the element of there being an entire hidden magic reality beneath the fabric of our own.

Forget it, even drawing inspiration from HP won't salvage it at this point. Someday, history will look back in sadness at how an overrated scribe like Tynion really soured the medium's milk with the themes he employed in his comics.

BIRD: Fantasy as a genre has had a bit of a rebirth in comics recently, particularly epic fantasy. What do you think is drawing people to it once more?

PIRES: It’s like you said—fantasy is EPIC. It has scope and scale that’s hard to compete with. I think that fantasy is a very traditional and trope-laden genre, so what we’re seeing now is creators and creatives throwing it in the postmodern blender and finding a way to bring everything that’s cool about fantasy into the present.

BIRD: How did your love for JRPGs influence the storytelling of the comic? Was it difficult to adapt storytelling methods of that genre to another medium?

PIRES: One thing that I think JRPGs and some of the best comics have in common is that they know how to tap into that childlike sense of epic wonder. So, I’m always trying to do that. We need cool creatures, cool character designs, and most importantly, BIG SWORDS. But really everything should be as visually interesting and exciting as it is dramatically exciting—comics are a visual medium after all.

I don't understand how lacing the tale with horror ingredients makes it a childlike wonder. Or makes it even remotely cool. What they say about "postmodernism" certainly is occurring though. The fantasy genre is being sullied by the horror genre getting blended in.

BIRD: Did you consciously attempt to make the worldbuilding of the series unique, or did that happen organically?

PIRES: I wanted to tie the history of Terra—the magical world beneath—deeply to our own history, so the world would feel lived in and grounded, and not just some stereotypical fantasy world. One way I think we achieve this is by showing you how at different points in world history the world beneath and our world have interacted and crossed over—including with some famous presidents, etc.

It remains to be seen if this'll turn out to be a stealth leftist assault on certain political figures. But even if that doesn't turn out to be a problem, the reliance on the same ingredients seen in Tynion's trash certainly is. That's so much more important than fun comedy?

Adventures in Poor Taste took a look at this comic's premiere, and says:

Curt Pires is always good for original, grounded ideas, which makes his new series Lost Fantasy seem way outside his comfort zone. Sure, he’s done superheroes, of a sort, but now he’s going full fantasy and even rewriting world history in the process. [...]

If that's what he's doing, then worries over whether bad political metaphors found their way into the script could be valid. And again, there's the violence levels to ponder:

If you enjoy world-building in comics, you’ll probably love Lost Fantasy #1. The first issue opens on a young girl running from someone so dangerous they can hack someone in half. Soon, she runs into traffic, and we then meet a magic-using rookie monster hunter, Henry Blackheart, who was brought in to investigate. It’s a tight opening that feels incredibly grounded, thanks to art by Lucas Casalanguida.

If that's supposed to imply it's "realistic", they've summed up yet another problem. There's been far too much reliance on "realism" that ultimately turns out to be anything but. After all, if there's a monster in the comic that can slice people in half or more in just one stroke, and even run faster than a cheetah or a caracal, is that "realistic"? Not by a longshot. It's shameful how AIPT tells us we'll even probably "love" this comic, when it's laced with repellent violence. Would these kind of tales have been so lauded a quarter century ago? Maybe not, but the way they're being fawned over now is definitely getting way out of hand. If this is what Lost Fantasy is all about, it does not live up to its alleged inspiration at all, no matter what the Final Fantasy franchise is built upon. It just insults what Mr. Pires claims it's paying tribute to.

Labels: dreadful writers, golden calf of death, indie publishers, msm propaganda, technology, violence