One of the things that has always drawn me to speculative fiction, and by extension comics, is worldbuilding. I love watching writers put a setting together from scratch, carving out the rules of societies and organizations and putting them into motion. There is something indefinably pleasing about a well-constructed world. Or even a poorly constructed world that at least looks pretty. Ian Edginton’s “Brass Sun” is, in many ways, the best of both worlds: a construct that is both visually and narratively pleasing, while being deeply flawed. And yet, those same flaws drive the arc of the plot and ultimately is the thing that keeps bringing me back to the impressive hardcover collection, “Brass Sun: The Wheel of Worlds”
Written by Ian EdgintonCover by I.N.J. Culbard
Illustrated by I.N.J. CulbardA gigantic mechanical solar system is dying. The brass sun that gives life to the dozens of worlds has started to slow, freezing the outer worlds and killing off the inhabitants.
On one such world, known as Hind Leg, a young girl named Wren is given part of the secret of the lost key that has the power to restart the sun. Charged with travelling across the various worlds to pick up other parts of the key which was broken up after The Great War, this unlikely heroine alone possesses the power to save the galaxy from extinction!
On the surface, “Brass Sun” is a very predictable space opera in the more classical sense of that phrase. It is an operetta about saving a literal orrery of planets from the impending death of the sun. It’s a premise that reads as classic Doctor Who, or Flash Gordon. But Edginton manages to give this somewhat dull starting point a lot more depth. This is mostly because the core quest is really just used as a set piece to stage different kinds of adventures across a fantastic spread of worlds, each with its own focus and part of the greater puzzle.
“Brass Sun” owes a lot of its success to this well-implemented piece of worldbuilding. A glittering toy that can spark the imagination of the reader. Even as the story reveals a new world, we keep pace with it, imagining what might be beyond the next planet. It is a flexible setting, consisting of a system designed in balance, but fallen out of it. Which happens to be a brilliant way of dealing with hawk-eyed readers eager to spot flaws in world. Edginton wisely has paced the book slowly, spending plenty of time on each world so we get comfortable, but not so long that any one planet has gotten boring. That being said, it has been a while since we’ve seen a new issue…
I had initially found “Brass Sun” while looking at the works of I.N.J. Culbard, who I was following for his adaptations of various H.P. Lovecraft stories. Culbard’s art somehow manages to be simultaneously lush and sparse. It’s full of bold dark details and visceral textures, yet still manages to feel flat most of the time due to the simplistic coloration and shading. Which works much better in the limited color scheme of a Lovecraft story than it does in the vibrantly colored “Brass Sun.” This becomes another odd contradiction, where the broadness of the color palette helps to enhance the atmosphere and tone of the various worlds, but Culbard’s basic shading and overreliance on simple color gradients detract from the richness of his textures.
The one thing Culbard does very well is ‘weird.’ From creepy robots to horrifying flying predators, the pages were Culbard shines always feature something unnerving. The designs of “Brass Sun” tend to out-perform the actual art quality, lending the book a sense that the protagonists aren’t actually very important. The protagonist, Wren, is particularly unmemorable with a blandly serious expression and a general lack of visual emoting. It’s telling that the things I remember about this book are always the things happening to the heroes, rather than the heroes themselves or their deeds.
This ends up being the most persistent complaint I have with the book. Wren is a completely interchangeable protagonist and Septimus, her sidekick, isn’t much better. Some of the supporting cast, like the treacherous Ramkin, are at least interesting, but your story has a problem when the most engaging character is actually just a plot device. Even the villains tend to have more personality. But this flaw isn’t really enough to drag down the whole. “Brass Sun” stands more on the strength of its premise and setting than it does on the action. And because the thread of the quest is so generic, the details of the setting are all the more important to the reader’s enjoyment of the book.
All of these observations are of the series as it exists so far. “The Wheel of Worlds” is a sizable piece of literature and not all of these observations and critiques hold true for the whole of it. Wren, for example, starts the series much more compelling than she ultimately becomes, but even that is a function of the world she starts her adventure on, and the circumstances surrounding it. My point, self-contradicting though it be, is that there’s a lot more story to tell with “Brass Sun,” and while I may criticize elements of the book, I am fervently awaiting the news that we’ll have more of this intriguing story to look forward to.
