4 out of 5

It’s definitely art over story, but oh what art.

And that’s a lie – this isn’t Spawn-style art over story, where the creator gets the bug in their head that they can write when their skills lie in the visuals, and deliver god-awful tropes and dialogue as a result; this is, rather, story influenced by art.  So then saying ‘…but oh what art’ means the story ends up getting a boost from that.  A boost into super-duper weird psychedelic stuff.

Lone Sloane is stolen from his spaceship by an iron throne and made into a throne-seated god by his kidnappers, so that he may be used as a conduit for another god.  But Sloane foils this.  Later, from his iron throne, he ruins another group’s godly pursuits, “regaining his humanity” in the meantime but maintaining his wacky godly red eyes.  Now begins his search for his home planet of Terra, which takes him through space battles and star bridges and dragon riding and brass gods and what have you, all shown to us via glorious over-sized pages in the Titan HC reprint.  Druillet often uses circles as his central theme, and so we get magical full pages of swirling design and crazy panels, Sloane spouting off some mystical mumbo-jumbo in any given “voyage.”  The art and detailing is astounding, the dream-like structures making the loose, wandering story more interesting, as plot beats flow through and around the whirlpool drawings.  Titan’s choice to almost go full-bleed with the pages puts some narration to close to the spine, and Druillet does crowd the page, leading to some questionable bubble placement, but the overall reading experience is definitely a unique one.

Sloane will probably appeal to fantasy readers first, but anyone with a taste for Giger or Lovecraft-influenced art should certainly break a copy of this open and at least flip through.