n a planet known as Kolony, a group of settlers built up a highly advanced scientific society, centered on a gigantic outpost called the Tower. There they conducted genetic experiments, ultimately building entire races to serve the needs of their developing civilization. But one of their experiments backfired. The short, aggressive worker-class creatures known as dwarves rebelled and attacked the Tower, striking back against their human masters. The war raged on for eight years. Many of the dwarves died in the grip of an unknown plague, but the humans suffered as well. Contact between the Tower and the small surrounding settlements was cut off completely.
Sixty years later, the Tower is considered a myth by many of Kolony's widely scattered inhabitants, most of whom believe they're the only survivors of the war. One community, the Maser village, believes otherwise, but the explorers they send to search for the Tower never return. In The Second Moon, Book 1 of this ongoing series of graphic novels, crusty old Zerit, the Chief Keeper of the Maser village, is out questing alone among the islands when he runs across a none-too-bright mechanic named Fango, living in a ruined outpost surrounded by technology he doesn't understand. Zerit attempts to steal some of the more valuable material, and the resulting comedy of errors leaves Zerit, Fango and Fango's intelligent teacher-robot, CIRO, marooned on a small sandbar with a wrecked ship.
In Book 2, The Isle of Dwarves, Zerit, Fango, CIRO and Zerit's "daughter" Erha are captured by a colony of renegade dwarves, led by a grotesque, genial, semi-mad woman who claims to know the exact location of the Tower, and plans to use her captives to destroy it. The human group escapes to a small island in Book 3, Eye of the Sea, and learns more about Erha's past and the Tower in the process. In Book 4, The Iron Tower, they put their new knowledge to the test, but Erha's suddenly caught up in a psychic link with a race of intelligent creatures whose race is dying out, thanks to the Tower-dwellers' genetic experiments.
Graphic art that's worth the wait
Italian-born artist Massimiliano Frezzato has developed considerably since his early work on Jerome Charyn's Margot series in the early '90s. His clean, smooth lines and penchant for breathtakingly beautiful women are still strongly in evidence, but his paint work is far more opulent and elaborate, and his attention to detail is downright astounding.
The world of Kolony, with its degenerate mixture of high and low tech, its rounded, organic-looking, insectoid mecha, its isolated feudal communities and its near-extinct psychic creatures trying to revive their species, are strongly reminiscent of Hayao Miyazaki's brilliant Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind--sometimes too close for comfort. But Frezzato takes a different approach to both the art and the story. Where Miyazaki's painstakingly detailed artwork is sometimes too ornate to hold up in its original black and white, Frezzato's luminescent coloring supports his meticulously elaborate images. Where Miyazaki evoked a melancholy, somber-but-joyful tone, Frezzato's story is fast-paced, energetic and dynamic, with his protagonists bouncing through chase scenes and weird encounters that wouldn't be entirely out of place in a Warner Bros. cartoon.
Not that he doesn't take his story seriously. His world is as elaborately detailed as his art, as evinced by Book 2's bonus section--a 16-page "Essential Survival Guide" to Kolony, which pours on technical, cultural and historical detail about the world's various races, species and cultures. At times, his hapless characters are a bit like peas rattling around in a too-big pod; there's just too much going on for them, or the reader, to absorb.
But the real beauty of the Keepers of the Maser series is Frezzato's gorgeous painted art, which Heavy Metal Publishing has given the royal treatment in these oversized, glossy books. The reproductions are beautiful, the deep, expertly blended colors vivid and opulent. Frezzato pulls off difficult, delicate effects--water, smoke, dust, clouds--with the same flair he brings to solid architectural design and thoroughly believable human figures. Work like this takes a great deal of time, and Heavy Metal says that while the series will continue, there's no telling when the next installment will appear. But Frezzato's work over the past five years certainly indicates that it'll be worth the wait.
