Elric: The Balance Lost #1 Review

One of fantasies longest living characters returns to the pages of comics. Today I will be reviewing Elric: The Balance Lost #1. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think.

Elric: The Balance Lost #1

So let’s talk about the book. Elric, world traveler and preserver of balance between chaos and law, arrives on a world overrun by chaos. Deformed, demented monsters appear and immediately attack him. He fights them off with Stormbringer, his magical blade that absorbs souls and let him travel between worlds. His enemies, however, have no souls and thus he cannot leave this world. He prepares for death  as a giant creature and a horde of monsters attack him. Meanwhile, on another world, Lord Hawkmoon, another version of Elric, learns from his daughter that not all of the beast lords are defeated and that a son survived. Lord Hawkmoon prepares to go investigate. Yet on another world, Corum, another version of Elric, returns home from a long journey only to find the man he thought was dead is actually alive and being tortured by townspeople. The man sees Corum and and asks for aid or the cosmic balance will be lost. Finally, on Earth, Erik Beck, a game designer, is having hallucinations of all of the other Elrics and what they are going through. He lives his life avoiding his twin brother, leader of the Law Party Militia, who did something in their past that still haunts his memories to this day. He is trying to get to work one day when his path is blocked by a Law Party protest. He tries to force his way through but is overwhelmed by the mob. They are about to bash his head in when a strange leather clad woman holding a gun appears and demands he comes with her. The fate of all worlds are at stake. And that’s the book.

So let’s talk opinions. To be honest, I’m not an Elric fan. I am, however, a Conan fan and a pretty big Fantasy fan. (Love that D&D) I remember the issue that Elric first appeared in back in Conan #14 and the character always intrigued me. I picked up this issue to see if I would enjoy it and was a little surprised. Right away, my first impression is of confusion. There is a lot going on. With little to no introduction of Elric and his history, it can be a little overwhelming to be exposed to so many characters and concepts right away. Not only do we have to deal with parallel worlds and parallel Elric entities, but we also have to absorb the fact that the real Elric exists as well and also travels these worlds. Once I took a breath though, and ignored all of the strange names, the story became a little bit clearer. I liked it. The whole dream within a dream concept was pretty cool. The plot is laid out pretty quickly but without too much fine details. I’m still not exactly sure where this story is going, but I’m guessing that Erik Beck will be the focal point of it and he will be on a quest to save reality. There was some nice action and the artwork was amazing, reminding me of the Conan books that I used to read back in the day. I also loved the many huge splash images. The chick at the end of the story looked pretty bad-ass and I definitely would like to see more of her. I’m hoping that over the course of this mini-series, we get a bit more background on the characters and maybe some history so that I, as a novice Elric reader, will know a bit more of what’s going on. If the book stays this vague, I have a feeling I’m just not going to enjoy it as much as I could. That’s my opinion folks. Take it or leave it.

Tags: Boom Studios Elric