Elric #8: The Balance Lost

Elric #8: The Balance Lost
Boom studios
Written by Chris Roberson
Art by Francesco Biagini

So, let’s get caught up with our friend Elric: at the moment, he’s battling the forces of both Chaos and Law outside the city of Tanelorn with Dorian Hawkmoon. They found two new allies, Corum Jhaelen and Eric Beck. After fighting to the gate of the city, all four get in, have a little break and then find out that there are bigger plans for all of them. Just before their big news, they find that Chaos and Law stopped fighting each other and turned their attention on the city with a simple thought process, control the city, control the multiverse. My thought would be, check please, I’m done.

Thankfully, there’s a quick update on what’s been going on in the beginning, so I wasn’t totally lost, that comes later. Reading the story, I was able to follow but there is so much that the writer wants to include that there are times I got lost. The art didn’t seem to fit the story. Now, I haven’t read any of the stories before this one but the art; could have been a little more detailed but this could be the style that the artist wanted. Now we get to the paneling, in this book there was no one style. They had basic lines, then shapes separating everything then something else. It didn’t add, blend or complement what was going on.

Overall, I kind of understand what the writer was trying to say. This issue is supposed to be the end of a story arc and the start of a new one but I didn’t see that like I do with other books. The paneling at times, distracted me, art or the story didn’t flow the way I see with most other stories that I read. Now, I know this was given to me with none of the others, so I’m at a little disadvantage but if I were a casual reader and picked this issue up cold, odds on I wouldn’t get it to start something new. In my humble opinion, if you’re a fan, get it, if not don’t. I give this 2 caps out of 5.