Set fifty years after the events of the most recent story arc, Heart Of Empire, Luther returns, although he never really went away, in yet another cross dimensional, parrelel smashing historical. Luther must face down a newly evolved threat, one which steps between worlds, shaping world events to its own end. Bryan Talbot has been writing and drawing the adventures of Luther Arkwright since 1978, another time and place away, a previous century. All these years later he continues to channel his own visionary festas and events, sprawling a multiverse of possibilites. The sheer expanse of his self authored vision has always displayed the creativity of an artist possessed of real girth. thats not a word to get bandied about much these days in any medium, but Bryan Talbot's powerful abilities to spin ideas into being warrent it.
After the splash of colour for Dark Horse' Heart Of Empire its back to black and white for The Legend Of Luther Arkwright. A big sturdy black and white volume 240 pages long, that has utopian and distopian cultures and political dogam wrestling in violent collision. Heroes rise and fall and we get to witness the whole pantheon of humanity at its very best and its very worst.History is a dirty business,a detail which has never escaped Bryan in his storytelling. Happy endings are hard to come by and although his main characters may well be standing knee deep in the filthy excesses of humanity their eyes are always fixed firmly on the stars.
this volume is a gripping one, with massive ideas in violent conflict with the notion of accelerated evolution where short cuts to the future most often lead to hell.The violent new birth of a path not taken is a bloody mess not meant for the faint hearted, but birth never is. The meek might well inherit the Earth but what will they do with it?
When you consider how long Bryan Talbot has been telling these stories you cannot help but marvel at how he also continues to make these same storiesfeel so freash. This latest instalment is in every way a newly trod path through his own multiverse. In short, it is as though Bryan Talbot has drawn a ragged door on the walls of reality through which his readers may step.
