3 out of 5

Hm, that’s too bad – I really liked the first Head Lopper series.  The second one very simply, suffers from sequelitis: Maclean’s intuition to go bigger (bigger clashes; more charactersl more quests) makes the story feel like its in a perpetual state of getting-going, and his manner of splicing different character’s scenes together unfortunately isn’t all the smooth.

There’s also a tendency for more hatch-shading here than before, and Jordie Bellaire – replacing Mike Spicer and undoubtedly an excellent colorist – is maybe a touch too nuanced for the book; the end result is that, along with the story, the art feels a tad more cluttered as well.  Combine this with a further knock: the increased action per page, in the sense that we’re often shunted into battles with several characters squaring off separately, is maybe a touch beyond Maclean’s abilities.  I was pretty disappointed with his choreography, which would always seem to approach the moments of conflict slightly after the actual impact of a blow or slash, with the motion lines and sound effects not doing a great job of communicating what just occurred.  Don’t get me wrong: the style is still Maclean’s blocky, simplified linework, and overall, the pages look clean, this is just a direct comparison to the prior arc, and there seems to have been an urge to nudge everything up one notch that works against Andrew’s – what I would consider – artistic strengths.  Though perhaps the next arc will find a balance between that nudge and the initial slick, appealing blockiness.

Norgal is a bit more talkative here; Agatha is maybe more friendly.  They team up with some other warriors – and some cute lil’ gumdrop characters who get mixed up in the biz – to storm a tower and slash a big boss.  This breaks down into some video game mini-quests within the tower.  Once the various characters are established – which is something of a hassle due to the aforementioned way Maclean keeps jumping around from scene to scene – and we’re effectively on our quest way, the series hits a momentary high on part with volume 1, but it again overreaches in its final stretch with some unearned “emotional” moments and unneeded (and unjustifed) twists.  The first series’ obliqueness was part of its originality; that the approach here is more “familiar” with its characters and narrative voice unfortunately has the effect of making this actionry stuff more generic in turn.

A fun, but bumpy read.