Sunday Revue March 15: Is'nana the Were-Spider

Stuck At Home? No Trouble!

Take A Journey Into The Fantastic With

Reaching back into African legend to tell a powerful story, this series revolves around Is'nana, the oddest of Anansi's brood of trickster children. When Anansi fails to come home to the Mother Kingdom of the Animal People, it is Is'nana who chooses to go searching for his beloved and infuriating father. The adventures and the horrors he finds along the way are laid out in these tales. 

(please note: screen captures were used in this review. The blurriness of the art is the fault of my system, not the artists. Their work is beautiful in original)

This work is the creation of a team: 

Written & Created by Greg Anderson Elysée

Art by Walter Ostlie & Lee Milewski

Letters by Joshua Cozine

Cover by Walt Msonza Barna

It can be found at this link.

The Rating

A powerful and emotionally complex exploration of a different kind of hero. 

The Raves

This story is a wonderful contemporary take on ancient legend, following in the tradition of Sandman and other works of Gamian's. But in place of the wistful and beautiful danger inherent in most of Gamian's pieces, this has the laughing and deadly playfulness of Anansi Boys. There's a touch of horror.

A good bit of blood and gore, a bit of terror.

 And yet, in the heart of it all, there is a majestic sense of power. A focus on the power of familial love. A great sense of fun. And an amazing depth of compassion. Throughout his adventures, Is'nana shows the strength of his soul in his compassion and his care for all creatures, even those who meant him harm. He is the quintessential warrior: out to protect, not to do violence.

But he is most definitely Anansi's son, and his clever, tricksome nature is a constant delight. He's a little gentler and more polite than his dad, but he's exactly as witty. His cheerful banter leavens a story that easily could have been a true horror. And it is wonderful to read.

The art seamlessly shifts between styles, keeping the bone-deep authenticity of the legends while drawing on everything from Golden Age pulp to, at one very weird point, Picasso-esque surrealism to create the shifting boundary between a spirit realm and what we generally call the real world. It's a powerful art style, loose without being sloppy and clever in its use of color and line as well as negative space.

 This is what Spiderman could have been if it hadn't stuck with an emo white kid. These stories draw on old sources, and in it they gain a depth that nothing from the Big Two can ever quite match. 

It also allows for the best mythology in-jokes between characters like Papa Legba and Anansi. 

Most of all, it repeatedly and effectively showed the power of love between friends, between family, and between people in a community. It's a story that reminds us a hero can be compassionate, and caring, without losing anything. In the case of Is'nana, his compassion is one of his strengths. And can I say how refreshing it is to see a loving and supportive family in a comic? Many thanks to the creators for skipping the Tragic Back Story (TM) and going with something much better: a father and son who love each other even when they get on one another's nerves.

The Razzes

My only comment is that I'd like to see a little more work in the animals showcased in the work. The human-animal hybrids have a lively and vibrant look to them, but a lot of the true animal forms look a little static and stiff. Slightly larger speech bubbles might have been nice as well; there was a lot of enlarging pages on Comixology.

The Revue

A powerful and wonderful contemporary take on ancient myth. If you're at home, this is well worth a read!