#ron z

Patriotika #1 Antarctic Press 2020 Written by Ron Z Illustrated by Antipus Coloured by Candice Han Lettered by Keith Perkins     The powers of a god, the troubles of a teen!     The goddess Athena, namesake descendant of the first Athena, has come to Earth to save it from invaders out of myth, but the very power that originally banished the gods is sapping her life force too!  To survive, she must reluctantly bond with a human: a scrawny college student named Erin.  Together, they transform into the mighty Patriotika to fight gods and monsters, protect and rally the military, and deal with campus social life!    Once again I am super impressed with Antarctic Press and the books they put out.  This could have been extremely cheesy and kind of trite and yet instead it feels amazingly fresh, current and sheds the skin of familiarity beautifully.  This isn’t the first time we have seen something like this happen but the way that this is being told is fantastic!  I do believe that instead of seeing one personality supplant another we are seeing a merging or sharing in one of its truest senses and I have to say that thus far it’s being remarkably handled.    I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told.  The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold and how the reader learns information is laid down nicely.  There are a few jumps in the story to keep things moving forward and I am glad that they did it in places that make sense for it to happen.  It serves the story we see well with how this is done and it even leads me into the character development that we see here as well.  The circumstances and situations that we see arise and how the characters act and react to them tell us a lot about them.  I like right from the start we see a built in supporting cast who are in on the ground floor of what is happening.  Also there’s something to be said for Tanya and her bitchiness which may or may not be a front or defense mechanism.  Though I cannot wait to see what happens with her soon enough.  The pacing here is great and as it takes us through the pages revealing these characters and the world they live in it is easy to see how well all of this works together to create the story’s ebb & flow.    I am impressed with the interiors here.  The linework that we see really is fantastic and how the varying weights are being utilised to draw out the attention to detail is extremely nice to see.  I would like to see a few other techniques instead of straight up linework but when it’s this good…  The way that we see backgrounds being utilised here is nicely done and I wish we’d have more.  There is never pleasing me lol.  But the city skyline, the sewer and even the daytime sky all have more than blanks and it works well in how we see depth perception, a sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a supremely talented eye for storytelling.  The colour work is divine!  How we see the various hues and tones in the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is beautifully rendered.  Here I like that we see more than colour blocking but we see gradation as well.  Also that the flesh tones and hues can create the musculature in characters we see adds so much to the characters. ​    Not gonna lie, the cover is definitely cheesecake pin-up and there’s nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t accurately show the depth of the work in the interior pages.  The story has layers and depth that are as intricate as the artwork itself and they all together to create this world that is interesting, engaging and leaves you wanting to explore it further.