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Publisher: Radical Comics
Writer: Ian Edginton
Artist(s): Patrick Reilly & Stjepan Sejic
Cover: Lucio Parillo

Minor Spoilers!

“Legacy of the Lost pt 2”: Here we have a retelling of the classic tale of Aladdin, originally one of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights which it is most commonly known in English.  Now Radical Comics has taken the famous story and with the help of Ian Edginton is attempting to dazzle a new generation of readers with this world reknowned classic.

Its been one month since the events of the first issue took place and Aladdin is probably now the wealthiest man on the planet as he has wished himself riches beyond any man’s dreams.  He is known to the people as the Golden Prince and everyone is in awe of him, everyone except Princess Soraya who sees him as another shallow rich boy while her father is highly interested in the Prince’s wealth.  The first meeting between the Prince and Princess does not go well so he tries again later that night and after their talk he decides to change his tactics for his next visit to her father.  Unfortunately for him the evil Qassim has arrived much earlier and outed Aladdin as a thief and states that the young man had beaten him and left him for dead a month earlier.

But now that Qassim has the lamp in his possession he double crosses the King and transforms him and his men into beasts and Aladdin fights for his life to escape as the Princess is captured.  During the fight Aladdin is able to cut off Qassim’s hand and quickly picks it up before escaping when he hears a small voice coming from the ring on the severed hand’s finger.  While dodging his pursuers on the street Aladdin runs into the pirate/adventurer Sinbad who sees a bit of himself in the young man, and has been keeping an eye on what’s been going on and agrees to help him.  From here the story shifts focus to Sinbad and a bit of his past as the two men travel to stop Qassim and save the Princess even after he let’s Aladdin know that the price will be high if he chooses to go forward with this quest.

There was much to like about this interpretation from Edginton in the first issue and the story itself just continues to excel here.  The interactions with Aladdin and Sinbad were unexpected but it doesn’t seem like a forced pairing of the two.  Aladdin lacks the experience to get him to where he would need to go and Sinbad has the resources to help him accomplish his goals.  I also like that there are several agendas going on here between the antagonists as each has an issue with our heroic duo. And though there is quite a bit going on here Edginton has the pacing just right and the reader isn’t rushed or overwhelmed with the story and everything progresses naturally.

Now the artwork is split between Patrick Reilly and Stjepan Sejic with Reilly handling the first half of the book or the Aladdin half as I like to call it.  I find no issues with his style as the book still is visually stunning.  He tends to focus more on the characters and their immediate area while his backgrounds don’t have the same amount of detail they are not in any way mediocre.  Stjepan takes over as the two characters descend into the realm of the Mantis Queen and the entire mood changes from there and this is where we get more information about Sinbad.  Sejic handles all of the mystical creatures and the heavy fantasy elements and makes them just pop!  Several of the backgrounds however seemed rushed and it’s only an issue when it’s distracting from the main action taking place, I’m just glad that this didn’t continue throughout his entire part of the book.

This is a three part story so I’m actually hoping that the last issue is just full of fights with mystical creatures and some swashbuckling action for our heroes. So far this is a great revisioning of Aladdin’s tale and one that I’m happy to be reading with hopes that it can be continued in another series.

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