“The Marked” #4 disrupts the flow of the previous two issues with more plot loading and conflict, despite an interesting premise thus far. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Written by David Hine & Brian HaberlinCover by Brian Haberlin
Illustrated by Brian Haberlin
Colored by Geirrod Van Dyke
Lettered by Francis Takenaga As a malevolent darkness spreads out from Shadowgate, The Marked join with The Shangen and The Mages in a final, all-out assault. This time, they have to win, because there is no Plan B.
“The Marked” #4 returns to the plot-heavy, serious structure of issue #1 and wrenches us away from the more interesting storyline in the military base to build some quick, unearned drama.
The major problem early on in “The Marked” was the lack of a defined point of view. In the first issue, we struggled through Saskia’s flashback (read: info dump) until the book coalesced around Liza. Hine and Haberlin have a good concept and some nice execution when we focus on Liza’s story, and the book picks up some steam in issues #2 and #3 as we uncover the mysterious Nazi death orb, a mysterious disembodied Nazi scientist head and a bit more about what the glyphs can do. There’s good lore built in these issues, and a cohesion that we lacked earlier thanks to an absolutely packed cast and too much narration. Unfortunately, issue #4 switches us back to Saskia’s perspective for a beat, and we draw back to a third person’s view of the general muddle and chaos of the book’s first big action set piece. “The Marked” has almost no sense of humor, either, and given said floating Nazi head, that’s a bit of a shame.
The concept here, again, is good: the glyphs allow for weird magic based on what looks like a combination of astral projection and pure imagination. There’s a lot of room here to play with visuals, like the barbed wire choke out in one panel, but there are far too many characters we’ve yet to really meet to contend with. The death in this scene feels unearned because we barely met the person in question before Liza’s story became the focus, and moving back to her now feels a little cheap. Characters use a lot of expository dialogue to fill in the gaps as to where Saskia and the Marked have been and what they’ve been doing since issue #1, and the whole scene staggers a bit under the weight of that load.
Haberlin has a very fine line and goes for a lot of precision detail that can get lost in larger scenes, and there appears to be some composite work in this book that doesn’t always feel integrated. There’s depth to these pages that draws the eye and demands a second, or even third, look, but that’s the opposite effect than what’s required for an intense action scene. Haberlin’s style works best when we focus on the glyphs and pages with one, possibly two, characters at play. In crowded scenes characters are reduced to their physical details, poses appear stilted and we lose a lot of that intricacy that makes other scenes more engaging. Layouts employ a lot of overlapped panels with a good deal of white space that’s often necessary to give the eye a break from said detail, but there are places where this functions well and places where it doesn’t work. The page that features the silhouetted orb works well, because it’s a bit of a cut-up or collage effect, but other scenes feel like they’re unmoored because the panels lack cohesion and a sense of purposeful placement.
Van Dyke’s colors are serviceable considering the challenge of adding depth and contrast to Haberlin’s fine line, but the palette isn’t particularly enjoyable to look at. There’s not much untextured space on the page to play with, so Van Dyke chooses some grim interior tones that are understandable but still grate on the eye a bit. The book lacks a definitive style save the pops of the glyphs, and the overall palette is dark enough that it often interferes with visual continuity even more. Van Dyke adds in some good moody shady The hyper-realistic interiors give way at one point to single color inset panels, and the style shift here is harsh and inexplicable given other characters’ reactions on the previous page.
Continued belowTakenaga’s lettering is minimally styled – a good idea, considering the wealth of visual detail at play here. Takenaga uses a thick stroke on the balloons to mirror Haberlin’s thicker outlines and help the balloons blend into the art. The font is pretty standard, with an upturned E and little peaks in the S to add a little flair. The narration is a bit tougher to read, thanks to a blue gradient that obscures some of the white text, and one box in particular straddles a panel and a swath of gray background and calls attention to the unused space on the page. The team goes all visual for the action scenes, and the lack of sound effects is interesting but probably wise, given the texture and vibe of the book.
Overall, “The Marked” is an interesting book that could do with more sophisticated art, more attention to its plot overload and a single point of view to carry us through. The book’s deadly serious tone doesn’t entirely work given the extensive visual issues and choices, either.
Final Verdict: 5.5 – “The Marked” #4 stops the momentum of the previous two issues with too much narrative, too quickly, and the book suffers as a result.
