I was pleasantly surprised that I liked Moon Knight #7, the first post-Ellis issue, as much as I did. The art was solid and the writing was pretty good as well. I was going to give the new creative team just one issue to see if I would keep with the book, and they've earned my money for at least another month or two.

Reconquêtes, t. 2: le piège hittite 

Co-created by an artist from my neck of the woods, this is a definitely cool fictional tale of sword and (a little) sorcery. In a nutshell, it is heroic fantasy based on Herodotus rather than Robert E. Howard.

What really gripped me here on top of the spectacular art is the level of scholarship involved, which never veers into the didactic but makes everything so much more authentic-sounding. The people we see here are straight out of Herodotus (with a few tweaks), the creatures are the ones seen in actual art from that region's antiquity, and when eocene creatures show up (there are a few indricotheres and mammoths here and there) they are anatomically correct.

Sorcery, what there is of it, is very rare and mysterious; as of this second book, it is also restricted to a handful of old men, all survivors of recently-sunk Atlantis. (We don't exactly know how they do it, but they can apparently cause people to die just by willing it, by concentrating hard enough. Unlike bolts of lightning issuing from their hands, this kind of "soft" magic is all the scarier for being subdued).

Book 1, which I read last year, introduced the horde of the living, a roving army composed of the recently united Scythian peoples of the Callipedae, the Cimmerians and the Sarmatians. (The Sarmatians are the Amazons, with all the customs we saw in the histories barring the chopping off of one breast to facilitate archery). The horde has excellent cavalry, trained cave bears, wooden palaces on wheels and (as we'll learn) a few griffins that must be kept in cages all the time. The kings of the Callipedae and Cimmerians and the queen of the Sarmatians value their alliance, but are jealous of their status and we understand that it wouldn't take much to cause a rift between them. Our point of view character is Thusia, a lady scribe from Babylon charged to write up a report on the famous horde for her distant king. As a honoured guest, she witnesses how the horde deals with a small band of pillaging Kurgans, a people of the Russian steppes. Meanwhile, unknown to the horde, the king of the Hittites intends to extend his dominion over the entire land, and he begins to plot against the alliance. During a religious ceremony, an Atlantean seer (who has been under the protection of the Cimmerians for many years) and a Sarmatian oracle come to blows after the latter predicted the former's death. The book ends as the beheaded body of the Atlantean is found in his tent.

Here in book 2 the two kings point accusing fingers at the Sarmatian oracle after a soldier from the Callipedae claims to have seen her near the Atlantean's tent the night before. Although the woman protests her innocence, her queen agrees to have her executed to preserve the alliance. leading to a lot of grumbling among her people. Clearly this murder has been organized to drive a wedge between the allies, but we have no idea who orchestrated it at this point.

Meanwhile, the Hittites have come up with a plan: lay siege to a Scythian city and allow a few people to escape to warn the horde, to take it by surprise with war chariots and trained boars. This leads to a great battle where things seem to go bad for the Scythians at first, as they are indeed taken by surprise and suffer losses when flaming arrows are shot at their elephants and drive the beasts to panic. But the fighting skills of the Cimmerians and Sarmatians allow the Callipedae to release their griffins, just as the remaining Atlanteans use their magic to cause multiple enemy soldiers to just drop dead. The victory seems to temporarily reunite the three Scythian tribes, but the last few pages show that the Hittites have meanwhile bought the services of Egyptian troops with more trained animals: ostriches (funny but not that terrifying) and gigantic indricotheres.

The artist, François Miville-Deschênes, frequently gives an idea of what he's working on at the moment on his blog; book three seems to be pretty well advanced. I look forward to it. Just as in Howard's fiction, there is a strong sense of pseudo-history at work, here; names with entirely too many apostrophes are thankfully absent, no invented mythological figures or cultures are present, and although I doubt there were indricotheres as recently as five thousand years ago the ancient animals are suited to the tale and contribute to its feeling of antiquity.

It would be great if this was translated, but in the meantime it's available in its gallic original language!

I had no idea the name "Allen" had the same origin as the Alan people (Alain in French). That's pretty interesting!

Squirrel girl?  Hellcat?

BATMAN SUPERMAN FUTURES END #1
BATWOMAN FUTURES END #1
INFINITE CRISIS FIGHT FOR THE MULTIVERSE #3
JUSTICE LEAGUE FUTURES END #1
MULTIVERSITY THE SOCIETY OF SUPER-HEROES #1
FUTURES END #20
SCRIBBLENAUTS UNMASKED CRISIS OF IMAGINATION #9
SUPERGIRL FUTURES END #1
SUPERMAN WONDER WOMAN FUTURES END #1
TEEN TITANS FUTURES END #1
PANDORA FUTURES END #1
WONDER WOMAN FUTURES END #1
X-FILES SEASON 10 #16
ALL NEW X-FACTOR #14
AVENGERS #35
AVENGERS WORLD #13
DAREDEVIL #8


trade waiting BPRD, DARK HORSE PRESENTS, ASTRO CITY, BATMAN ETERNAL, FABLES, UNWRITTEN, SAVAGE DRAGON, TREES, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN

Ha ha, loving it: