Ether: The Copper Golems #2
Publisher: Dark Horse
Writer: Matt Kindt
Artist: Dave Rubín
Review by Michael Farris, Jr.
In Ether: The Copper Golems #2 Boone Dias and company have sprung the greatest spell hacker from prison, and he proves his skill immediately by sending the prison’s over-dragons on the wrong scent. They make their way to the source of the holes between Earth and Ether that are letting the Copper Golems through. Boone scientifically deduces that Ether is made up of all of Earth’s myths-become-reality, and this helps lead him to the source of the problem. But first, he needs to gain access by getting past the most powerful wizard in Ether.
One of the bigger challenges I have when reading Ether is whether or not I actually like the main character. In the last issue, Boone didn’t exactly add to his laurels by proving to be a poor family man, and in this one, he talks up quite a storm and proves himself to be a somewhat overbearing know-it-all. I felt myself aligning more with the other characters around him as they’re just kind of writing him off. And I’m still defaulting to my mental acceptance that there is unexplainable magic happening in Ether. That said, it was interesting to see Boone’s take on the background of how Ether came to be.
All of Boone’s soliloquies on the science of Ether were so hard to pay attention to because of the sheer brilliance that is Rubín’s art. Just flipping through the pages will fill your brain with a wide assortment of bright colors and extremely imaginative settings and creatures. And one of the most entertaining factors of this book are the subtle details that end up stealing the show, like the living and petrified cigarette the spell hacker smokes and a micro-panel answer to whether or not conjured golems end up suffering (yes).
The scene where the storytelling definitely steals the show is when Boone presents the most powerful wizard with a difficult riddle to solve. Reading through the problem, it got more and more complicated for me to keep up, and I essentially cheated and went to the answer at the end of the book to satisfy my curiosity. But some day when I don’t have review deadlines, I’m going to go back and make sense of it.
Verdict: Buy it.
Ether: The Copper Golems #2 may be a little word heavy at parts, but this universe is just so darn inspired that I have to go back for more. The artwork alone is worth the price of admission.
