By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)
- Spoiler Alert
The continuing adventures of Jim Lake Jr., aka the Trollhunter, is packed with lessons for young Atlas to learn from. Volume two, The Felled (by Dark Horse Comics) arrives on shelves today, and this story takes places after this lad failed to impress the Nunez family from the season two episode, “Hero with a Thousand Faces.”
These stories take place in between the broadcast episodes and continue the trend started in volume one. Jim is having a hard time balancing his life of a teen to that of a hero. Fortunately, his friends at Troll Market refer back to the lives of other Trollhunters and regale this lad with fun action filled and thoughtful moments about what they faced and how he can learn from it.
Of the four told in this collection, the second tale featuring Spar the Spiteful is worth noting. This particular warrior never had his life in balance, and in what he learned while dealing with an alien life (not the humans), earned him high marks with the fleshlings.
With the third story about Araknack the Terrible, his overzealousness is considered. What he learns is not to tackle problems head-on. He has to use more than his wits to handle threats. Bravery can only happen when one is smart about it.
These stories by Richard Hamilton help add in what defines a warrior. He’s matched the flow of an episode into printed form, and definitely knows the lore Much like King Arthur and his knights embodied an ideal Christian culture, Jim Lake Jr. knows his fellow past namesakes had a code of honour to follow. While they had to learn from the school of hard knocks. this teen does not have to follow in their footsteps, as long as he takes heed.
Two artists worked on this book. Timothy Green II provided the main illustrations and Omar Lozano worked on the tales within the tale. Lozano’s layouts are very clean and dynamic. I particularly loved the colouring work done with the second tale. Edgar Delgado‘s style brings a new air of unworldliness with the introduction of another race to the Arcadia universe. If I am to assume in this tale is setting the seeds for the next chapter: Three Below, the bits of dialogue has summarized the series.
Aliens have visited the Earth many times! They are hiding technology here and it is done to prevent them from falling to enemy hands. Maybe it also explains why the town of Arcadia has become such a hotbed too. While all this science fiction is a far departure from the fantasy of Trollhunters, I am welcoming it with open arms. Blinky would be proud.
