Hexagon Comics -Kabur #2: Kabur / Zembla

Jean-Marc Lofficier & Thierry Mornet; art & cover by Mike Ratera; colors by Studio Cirque & Anthony Dugenest.

7x10 squarebound comic, 

84  pages 

color
ISBN-13: 978-1-64932-028-5. 

US$24.95  UK £19.99

https://www.hexagoncomics.com/shop-kabur-2-kabur-zembla.html

Across the gulf of time, the dreaded Demon Queen Mauve has pitted Kabur, exiled Prince of Thule, against Zembla, the Lord of Lions. Torn from their native worlds, the two heroes become the pawns in an inter-dimensional game of carnage and conquest… No matter who wins, Earth will lose!
 
Drawn by top Spanish artist Mike Ratera, this 66-page saga was the first major crossover event of the relaunched Hexagon Universe twenty years ago. It is accompanied here by new maps and documents showing Pangea, the World of Kabur.

Firstly, I liked the story and how it ran so I have no problem there. It is setting up and establishing a world for this and future stories. The problem is that I am not fond of the "super steroid muscles" as in evidence in the cover illo. Now I have written this in the past and people have told me how they like it but in certain books. Those books were the sword and sorcery genre. Now I am a John Buscema Conan/Tarzan art fan. I will even go for Barry Windsor-Smith Conan art and, as we ought to know by now, in comics it is certainly a case of "different strokes for different folks"!

Bearing that in mind, I sat down to read this. You'll be happy to know I never gouged my eyes out in disgust! In fact, and I cannot understand why, the super muscles never  put me off and those seemed confined to Zembla and Kabur and at one point I wondered how Ben Dilworth would draw this.  There is, with the female characters, a certain Lady Death vibe going. The colour work is really very nice and looking at the book as a whole I realised the art and colour reminded me somewhat of the 1980s Rock N Roll Comix.

By the time I reached the end of the story I found the maps and background info on the world involved in this story. I long ago gave up trying to work out why I -or anyone else- likes something but I liked this so I'm not going to think any deeper on this! 😃

Hexagon Comics has been a breath of fresh air when it comes to comics and I wou;ld recommend this and point out that the colour comics tend to be slightly more mature than the rest. the big problem comesin the book price and this is, sadly, a fact of life when it comes to publishing; a full colour book is going to cost you a lot more to produce than a black and white book. I hope it does not put anyone off buying a copy because it is fun and well put together -a treat for someone interested in Barbarians and sorcerors in comics perhaps?