How I Became the King of Darkness… – Arawn comic book review, vol. 1

Ronan Le Breton, together with Sebastian Grenier, a cartoonist known from the Cathedral of the Abyss , created a dark world, and made the dark king of hell the protagonist. Can a fantasy comic about a cruel antihero be intriguing?

 

The Lord of the Dead tells his story

The story begins with Arawn talking to his severed head. Well, it shouldn’t surprise anyone, because the protagonist is the ruler of the dead. The authors decided to answer the most interesting question in the comic, which is how to become the ruler of darkness! In fact, the entire first volume is based on flashbacks. Occasionally interspersed with scenes with Arawn and the head of his former servant, Owen. It is worth mentioning that this individual, despite the loss of almost the entire body, retained a sharp tongue! The memoirs of the lord of darkness are very intriguing. They are a bit like legends or myths about the birth of heroes. What is worth emphasizing, this is not only the story of Arawn, but also of his three equally powerful brothers. Each of them started their adulthood with a fight with a legendary monster to obtain powerful artifacts at the end. the only question is how did a stick carved in the privacy of his father’s home suddenly find itself under the protection of the Guardian of the Forest? Moreover, how does this staff possess such powerful power? There is some illogicality here, but it’s not a big flaw, because we are dealing with a mythical story, additionally told by an exceptionally chatty storyteller. He is the one who spins the story, so he can shorten it and omit unimportant details, and after all, supernatural forces are involved in such stories.

It is worth paying special attention to family relationships, because the mother of four brothers predicted that one of them would become equal to the gods! It is not surprising, then, that from an early age men competed fiercely with each other. The strangest thing is that there are basically no positive characters in the comic. Everyone has something on their conscience, moreover, everyone can show a lot of cruelty! Among other things, for this reason, the future ruler of darkness arouses more sympathy than even the oldest of the brothers.

Battles with giants

Sebastien Grenier is a talented cartoonist. I especially liked the appearance of individual creatures, including the sea succubus. The fight scenes are also very good, the clashes are aggressive, bloody, and the warriors show no mercy to each other. Especially the battles involving thousands of soldiers are extremely epic. First of all, I would attach myself to excessive nudity. Of course, it is known that in a fight with a woman, every monster or human will only aim at the breast or crotch, so the rest of the body should be exposed … Seriously, although Sebastien Grenier skillfully shows the beauty of female shapes, there is too much nudity in this volume . The cartoonist could, for a change, give up the nonsense and stereotypical vision of a woman’s armor.

Is it worth messing with Arawn?

Arawnit intrigued me from the first moment. It’s nice to see the world from the dark lord’s perspective for a change. And although Arawn is every inch a dark, merciless and cruel lord of the dead, he is not a one-dimensional anti-hero. He went through a lot in his youth, he had to struggle with rejection, contempt and loss of loved ones. All this greatly shaped his dark soul. Not only that, Ronan Le Breton showed that Arawn can love! It all adds up to a pretty interesting fantasy story. I also understand that the authors tried to make their world exceptionally cruel and merciless for all living beings, but especially for women. However, I still think that this nudity could have been less. I’m looking forward to the second and final part. I’d like to see how Arawn became lord of the dead!