3 out of 5

I half want to hang in there for volume 2, but ‘The Ice Death’ is so sporadic – good ideas in each of its distinct sections which individually never reach fruition – that I’m not sure I have faith that de Campi is actually building toward anything.

Valentine Renaud is a private in the French army.  We pick up his story in 1812 as he and a fellow soldier are trekking through the snows of Russia on the run from Cossacks, trying to get back to their front.  They stumble across a fallen – seemingly French – soldier and a woman trapped under a carriage.  Both die; as the mysterious soldier passes, he focuses on Valentine and asks him to carry a particular sword back to a particular captain.  Valentine agrees.  Immediately he and his comrade are attacked by some red-eyed, grey skinned enemy soldiers.  His friend is felled, his horse is felled, then Valentine makes a last stand… and dies.  The sword he’s been tasked to carry begins to glow, and a pair of hands reach of from beneath the ice and latch on to Renaud.

These opening pages are what I wanted the book to be.  Christine Larsen’s heavy penciling hand matches the frenzied nature of the snowy environment, covering up her inability to properly pace the action (often a problem with those unfamiliar with drawing battles, the exact moment on which you’d need to focus to animate the scene in your head is missed, the panels either showing a second before or a second after the event).  Regardless, the energy and immediacy of the art in this first chapter, with its dusky grey and white colors all very much sets the tone; couple with some narration that gives the setting some weight and hurried banter that gives the characters a realistic sounding voice… it works.  The frequent forced perspectives hint at the origins as a webcomic, but as Mark Waid mentions in his foreword, its designed to still work as a book and it does.  And kudos on the awesome beneath-the-ice shot; very unexpected.

However, from chapter 3 on, things just start to move a little too fast and the grace disappears.  Valentine is pulled into the icy waters and rejuvenated by a woman offering some kinda elixir.  He blacks out, wakes back up in a hospital, then grabs his sword and goes on the run… followed by more red-eyed creatures.  He runs into a chap who jabbers at him about the sword being a key to another world.  They fight some red-eyes en masse – a long-ass, several chapter battle that, now without the snow blotting Larsen’s art, doesn’t flow to well since it’s mostly action – then hop to the other world with a whole bunch of transplants who’d gotten stuck on Earth.  This other world is pure fantasy land, and allows de Campi and Larsen some yuks with depicting characters from all throughout the fantasy spectrum (fairies, dragons, etc.) and poking fun at how disappointing that world is to Renaud as it lacks… reality.

Fed up, Valentine jumps back to our planet (because it was a huge deal to cross over but apparently simple as pie to cross back…) except its now 2012.  Thankfully there are still demons chasing him.  To be continued.

Now de Campi does a fun job of giving us as little information as possible but still allowing us to get the gist.  However, that being said, with the buildup of the first couple chapters, Valentine accepts all that happens to him with frustrating ease.  I understand that pacing works differently in webcomics, but the way the magical chap keeps blabbing nuggets about being from a world of gods and the history of our planet… you’d think there’d be a bit more discussion on the matter.  Same with the red-eyes, which are just automatically accepted as baddies.  No worry that they can twist and contort into all sorts of odd creatures (more creative nods to Larsen for some pretty killer monster designs).  Equally un-affecting was how the ‘gods’, once back in their homeland, said ‘yippe’ for one panel, and then it was all like big whoop, Valentine, we haven’t been home in eons but whatever.  So a nice time-spanning concept that just front-loads several big puzzle pieces, but then doesn’t explain them in an attempt to, I assume, withhold some aspects to be doled out later.  Or those aspects don’t exist, in which case it’s just shaky plotting.

Another huge problem – and this goes back to Larsen – is character identification.  Early on I confused Valentine and his partner – fine, first few pages and it’s snowing – but later in the book, we’re supposed to recognize some characters and I had no connection to any of the physical cues I suppose Larsen was trying to use to signify that a character on page X was the same as a character on page Y.  This is paired with an annoying problem that happens in all media – Valentine forms an attachment with the girl in the lake who revives him.  Sensibly, but we don’t exactly feel it.  It’s not given page space to belabor his feelings, rather, it’s just assumed that he’d be obsessed enough to give up fantasy land to go looking for her.

So besides my problems with the art, the issues with ‘Valentine’ mostly stem from a lack of depth in its telling.  Which is unfortunate considering how much potential there is to the story.  Alex de Campi is intelligent enough to still make it work – overall we like Valentine, and little moments are very rich (a quiet sequence of V obviously hating his time in the other world is an example, but it’s a subtlety that’s dismissed during the next page’s conversations), and every now and then a creepo or a concept will just tickle your fancy.  You want to like the book, and it’s easy to read, with pretty wonderfully icy colors in its opening chapters and nicely blended colors in the latter chapters (post the woods-chase sequence – the former part Larsen’s colors, the latter Tim Durning).  And I suspect that in its original incarnation, week to week (or however frequent the updates), it was impressive how much de Campi would expand the story.  But, for better or worse, as a single read, its poor pacing and lack of emotional connection with its reader hobble it enough to make it an average collection.