We are in the area of a map marked with “Here Be Dragons.”
In a land where there actually are dragons, that means: “Here be something significantly worse than dragons.”
After a six month hiatus it’s back! Keep reading for a review of Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’ Die #16.
(Warning: some small spoilers for this issue, and some big ones for all the previous issues.)
Ash is dealing with the fallout of all her decisions. You could argue that everything she did was to keep a lot of people in Die safe. You could also say she unleashed Eternal Prussia, destroyed a town, took over a city, kept Matt from seeing his father before he died, and in one way or another betrayed every person she knew. So now she’s in a small cell in the ship’s hold, muzzled to keep from using her power, because not even her friends trust her anymore.
(I love the design of that muzzle. It has spikes on the outside, which I imagine don’t do anything except convey the message “do not remove because this chick is fucking dangerous.”)
We get a quick wrap-up of how they left things in Angria (short version: not great, but getting better) and catch up to everybody on their way to an island in the center of the empty sea in the realm of Thirteen, where (if I understand correctly) they’re hoping to find a way to the core of Die before the dice created by the Forge get there and go back in time to their younger selves, both starting the whole mess they’re in now and also ending the Earth. (I think I’ve got that right, it’s complicated.)
It’s a quieter issue, a chance for everybody to regroup on the voyage and for us to get a handle on everyone’s mood: Chuck’s dying and miserable, Angela’s hopeful and distracted, Izzy’s pessimistic, Ash is resigned and Sol is….Sol. Still a monster, but realizing that he was never running the world of Die, he was just another player, and now he’s just trying figure out all the rules. And doing an okay job at it: the solution for how to keep Ash from compelling anyone and keep Sol from eating anyone at the same time was brilliantly efficient, if you know how Ash’s powers work.
But I also think that rather than being a player, Sol could be the ultimate NPC, because something’s still speaking through him.
Matt, meanwhile, is the de facto leader, which I hope works out well for him. He broke the rules when he took on two Emotion Weapons (grief and rage), and last issue Izzy thought that’d probably drive him insane. He seems calm for now, but he’s not kidding himself either.
“I’m sad. I’m angry. I can handle anything. Except feeling like this for another second.”
That idea is repeated a couple times. Matt can’t handle feeling that way one second longer. Chuck can’t handle being sober for one second longer. Izzy refuses to spend even a single night on the island. Everybody’s in just a little too much of a hurry.
I had a hard time picking my favorite image in Stephanie Hans’ art: the closeup image of Molly’s mouth, Izzy looking through a window with the Dreamer god behind her, the colors when they exit the submersible in the cave, Ash as she asks “You’re drinking to forget?”, there’s a lot to choose from.
And finally, what they find under the ocean is just deliciously perfect. They’ve already met Tolkien, Charlotte Bronte, HG Wells; the rulers of each of the regions in Die are always a classic fiction author, and last issue they assumed that the the deep sea ruler would be Jules Verne. Now they find the real ruler, and it perfectly explains all the weirdness of the island, including why Ash’s narrative doesn’t sound normal. I won’t spoil it, but I got a giggle out of Chuck saying it was good that the ruler couldn’t see Matt or Izzy. If you know anything about this particular author, you’ll know why. I love snide references like that.
