Dark Horse releases a fantasy sci-fi comic a group of people who are about to recover a mysterious artifact to restore magic in Elixir the graphic novel. For once I always thought that the elixir is some sort of miracle medicine, a potion, or something that grants eternal youth. But this time, this story is going to be about an all-out war to eliminate magic. This is much like the Shinra company who sucks the life of Mako energy from the planet just to have more power in Final Fantasy 7. But yeah this comic is like Final Fantasy and Sin City that combines magic and some crazy architecture. The story is written by Frank J. Barbiere and Ricky Mammone and illustrated by Victor Santos. Victor is a cartoonist and screenwriter of Valencian comics, and he won the Prize Josep Toutain a I’Autor Revelacio at an international comic convention in Barcelona. And he has worked for several American publishers such as Dark Horse, Image, DC, and IDW. And he’s one of the most fruitful Spanish authors of his generation which is highlighted in the fantastic comic and the comic policiac.
The front cover shows a monochrome-colored cover of the two characters holding out their weapons, getting ready to battle, and they looked more intimidating than anyone else. There’s not much to explain here. So at the start of the story there, the narration comes out something as if you’re seeing the opening text from Final Fantasy games. “The era of magic has come to an end. Technology flourishes in the modern world. But not all have moved on. The Druids hold on to old magic, hoping to restore the balance and destroy technology. Rumors of an artifact known only as “the Elixir” fuel their holy quest to reinstate magic.” It’s actually one of those stories where businesses are booming around the countryside, and then build a big city just to get rid of the old. And then the other people rebels against the businessmen just to get their old lives back. That is more likely what other humans think.
The starting pages, everything of this book is all colored bluish monochrome, and the story starts with one of the most rebellious scenes in comic book history, it starts with the big guy named Claude who had a meeting with some businesswomen who tells him to surrender. However, part of him is that he can’t accept the reality of this world. And the next scene starts with a girl named Mara who just using her chalkboard to make a magical sigil, but then some idiot set the bomb out of nowhere and made her ruin the sigil. However, the sigil that she made is meant to destroy technology by using black magic. Even though, both of the characters have a thing in common is to fight together just to destroy modern technology. They sparred at each other, however from the time that she learned that Claude is alive and had the elixir, she attacked her friend for lying to her about everything and killing her. And after that, she is cast out by the council for a whole day, and with that, she spent a whole day finding Claude and going to the place where the Elixir is being held.
While I was passing through the pages, there are many scenes that the characters interact and even action scenes are like making you watch another scene of the matrix. But the strange thing about what Claude was doing outside in the wilds? and that is a mystery. But there’s a thing about the story that at the end of the story, Mara drinks the Elixir, and then one of the flowers started blooming and the flower is made of pure magic, and finally, the world is starting to rebuild once again.
The story is quite interesting to know the fact that the elixir is the ray of hope to return to the world that used to be living in a world of digital technology and industrial evolution. But the journey had something meaningful for the main characters, and it was some memory lane for both characters at the same time. I can’t say anything better about the art, except everything in the comic is colored in monochrome. And the story is like Final Fantasy mixed up with Sin City, which is more logical to know where all these ideas came from. Well anyway, if you rather want to read a story where the world’s only hope to return once it was before is a miracle medicine, then this comic is just for you.
Newsdesk