Rose, a high fantasy series that is teetering a bit too close to the familiar, releases its second issue this week. While my first impressions were favorable towards the art, I was left wanting when the story retread such mundane, overdone territory. Does the second issue expand upon the first in a memorable way? Not exactly, but the art is still excellent.
Read MoreWhen you're dealing with an oversaturated genre such as Fantasy, it's easy for stories to feel repetitive. Creators grow up consuming a limited subset of material and then they write from what they know. This leads to a perpetual narrowing of scope and vision as tropes and cliches fester up. New ideas are risky because while they may occasionally prove successful, it's more likely that they will be rejected. That's why a common, safer approach is to take a well-worn concept and add one or two new elements to make it feel fresh. In the case of Image Comics' Rose, that element is cats.
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I'm going to reserve judgment on this title. My first thoughts were that it was generic as fuck sounding and that using Meredith Finch's Wonder Woman writing to market it was a bad idea. I've yet to hear anyone say that was a good time in WW's life. But, how many creators have been there and turned it around at Image? We'll see. I'll give Rose an honest shot and hope that it can surprise me.
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