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Soulfire vol. 3 #0
Publisher: Aspen MLT
Writer: J.T. Krul
Artist: Jason Fabok
Cover: Jason Fabok

“Shadows of the Past”: I’ll be honest here, I’m a complete newcomer to Soulfire. Not only that, I’m also unfamiliar with Aspen MLT, aside from the fact that they publish the comics with the alluring covers. So with Soulfire getting ready for its third volume, I thought that now might be a good time to see what they’re all about.

The first thing that caught my eye was the artwork. Sometimes you’ll get a beautiful cover on the outside and completely different and bland artwork on the inside. But here, both are of the same quality. Jason Fabok does a fantastic job on it, as well as John Starr with the coloring. The best word to describe the artwork is crisp. Sharp, gorgeous, detailed art that doesn’t mess around with failed experimentation or half-assed work.

One of the main reasons why I checked this out, was because of J.T. Krul. He keeps the dialog natural and quick witted, with just a touch of black humor. It’s too early in the game to determine how good of a job Krul is doing, but it will be interesting to see where he takes it.

Also, a nod to Josh Reed doing the least appreciated work in comics (lettering). He does a unique style of font in borders without it being distracting, although the credit font was a little hard to read (ironically his name being the hardest).

So is this the perfect time to jump in? Well…yes and no. At the end of the ten pages of story, I didn’t completely understand what Soulfire was all about. I was able to piece parts of it together, which seems to go something like this….

Some guy is running from a tribe of Amazonian pixies (human height) in South Africa. But the thing is, they’re trying to warn and protect him from an impending evil that ends up killing him anyway. The evil is kind of like…The Darkness demons meets Blackest Night. Out in Saint Petersburg, Russia, a blond guy (who must be important since he’s on the alternative cover) gets hassled by a Russian. But with a little blue magic fire, he takes care of the Russian and goes on his way. This is all because we’re living in a new era of magic, where the forces of good have returned, but so has a new threatening evil. Because as the end of Soulfire #0 says: “The Light has returned… …But so has The Dark.”

The neat little two-page interview also helped me make more sense of it. But what I would’ve really liked, would be a page or two of bios, story lines, recaps, etc., that would introduce newcomers to the series.

This issue, like a lot of #0s, was more of a preview, a glimpse of things to come. However, the important part was that this small sliver of a glimpse got me interested enough to see more of it.

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Andrew Hudson
ahudson@comicattack.net
@Hudsonian

A copy of this comic was provided by the publisher for review.