10th Muse: The Lost Issues #1
Written and Illustrated by: Davis, Cruz, Tavakoly, Lowe, Davis
Released by: Bluewater
We come back to the world of the 10th Muse and…immediately I feel confused. This issue is numbered as number 1, but it seems to pick up with the events of where number 4 left off with Trident being at the Muse’s door…hurt and bleeding, unless this is something that happens frequently in the series. Either way I read the issues out of order because it made more sense, but now I wonder…which is right?
The story begins with Trident appearing at Emma’s door, hurt and bleeding, suit torn, while a mysterious villain waits outside and watches. Emma helps Trident get cleaned up and back on his feet. He seems to heal rather quickly and his suit is no longer torn or stained as they head out to find the two mysterious women that did this to him. Meanwhile Trident’s father, Poseidon, has showed up…he apparently has recruited these two mysterious women, along with an evil looking wooden puppet, to kill his son. Why he wants to kill his son is unknown, but these three are out there…waiting to attack Trident and Emma, in her guise as the 10th Muse. And the battle begins. Bystanders are affected, buildings are destroyed, and power is unleashed upon the city as neither team really gets the upper hand. And then. Trident is stabbed and a bomb goes off blowing up the building. Trident didn’t escape and his friends mourn his loss. But all may not be as it appears.
I really enjoyed the last issue, but this one…I’m confused. As I mentioned I read them out of sequence, because it seemed to fit…but if the numbering is correct just how often does Trident get beat up and end up at Emma’s door? If I had read them in order I would have thought it was a rather fast wrap up of the storyline of Trident being seemingly killed. The introduction of the villains is also somewhat confusing, particularly the rather evil looking doll…I thought it was a misplaced ad, because he just suddenly appeared and wasn’t even really introduced. Basically this story just doesn’t really flow well and I can’t tell if it’s the writing of if someone screwed up in laying out the panels.
The artwork is done by the same artist as the other issue, so obviously it should be the same right? Well…it’s difficult to tell. Whoever laid the graphics out for this issue needed to go back and take a second look at them. The layout is off, the colors are bleached, the fonts are blurry, and basically it looks like the printer wasn’t set right. In fact in one place two pages are supposed to be a centerfold and read across, but they’re split by an ad! It makes it really difficult to figure out what the heck is going on and ruins what would otherwise normally be great artwork. My other big issue is with the cover. It has nothing what so ever to do with the storyline and is rather disturbing in my opinion. We see characters that don’t even appear in the issue. It makes me wonder if perhaps this was supposed to be scheduled for a different issue.
I really wanted to like this series and perhaps I’ll give it another shot, but this issue just throws me off. The numbering of the series seems to be off, the layout of the graphics is poor, and the storyline is a bit rough. I’ll just hope that someone screwed up on this issue and the other ones will be better.
