Obscure Comic of the Month is a column where I take a look at a comic or series that hasn't really been talked about. This covers independent comics, zines, weird spin-offs, webcomics and more.
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The Envoy and the Warrior by Simon Roy and Linnea Sterte
Contains Spoilers
Way back in my second entry in this revived series of columns I took a look at Simon Roy's Habitat and came away with the feeling that I really wanted to discover more about this strange, seemingly galaxy spanning dark age. In the years since then, Roy has given me exactly what I wanted, with his webcomic Griz Grobus showing us more of these strange and wonderful feudal societies living within the ruins of a half-forgotten high tech civilisation.
It is not, however, Griz Grobus I am here to talk about today, but the short comic The Envoy and the Warrior, which came as a bonus with Grobus' Kickstarter campaign. In my last entry on Habitat I talked about being fascinated by the reawakening of what seemed to be some kind of eldritch star god that got little explanation by the story's closing pages. So fascinated was I that I even did fan art of the creature. So imagine my delight to discover that the short comic itself focusses entirely on these enigmatic beings.
One of Roy's greatest strengths is to leave an element unexplained and allow a certain degree of ambiguity to generate around an aspect of the story. He trusts the audience to pick up on what they're reading. While the origins of the star gods is never fully spelled out, the story heavily hints at their nature as artificial beings. There's a heavy does of Iain M Banks' Culture series in this story, tapping into the idea of artificial intelligences as benevolent, but not benign, custodians of mankind's future.
The story begins with two such gods meeting, approaching first in physical space and appearing as unsettling, and nightmarish looking creatures. They then manifest as more recognisably humanoid once they pass into another plane of existence. A paradise, once again heavily hinted, but never outright confirmed, to be a digital space.
Much like Habitat the artwork is on impeccable form. This time Linnea Sterte creates a mind bending blend of body horror and geometric impossibilities for the forms of the star gods, before drawing us in to the beautiful serene landscapes of the paradise. It's human inhabitants, recognisable but unremarkable, clash with the slight and ethereal gods. Their somewhat subdued facial expressions betray that these creatures are far beyond human, and that their thoughts are likewise alien to ours.
The larger of the two gods is introduced as a former god of war, now tired from violence, having created a paradise to house the souls of those innocents that had previously suffered at their hands long ago. The smaller of the two gods, an envoy, has arrived to ask a favour. Part of humanity is now beginning to crawl out of it's long dark ages and back into the stars, bringing potential weapons of galactic destruction with them.
The old war god, however, has no desire to return to their old ways, no matter how noble the intentions. After the envoy questions their motivations one too many times, the war god seemingly kills them in physical space, and they awake in a humbler body, back within the paradise.
The Envoy and the Warrior is short but it packs a lot of themes behind it's sparse script. This tale is one of guilt and responsibility, of action and reaction. Despite only a few moments passing between them, the two star gods debate their fundamental philosophy, in both what they say, their body language, and ultimately their actions. Does the true pacifist seek to exempt themselves from conflict, or seek to avert it? Are actions of atonement for past sins negated if those sins are repeated once more? How ethical is violent action when it is a reaction to an evil that may not even occur?
As mentioned above, Roy is not a writer that wants to spoon feed you the subtext. As the story ends, it is up to the reader to decide how warranted the war god was in the action they took against the envoy, and if, as lowly mortals, we can even comprehend the stakes of such immortal beings.
Even at only sixteen pages long, The Envoy and The Warrior is equally as fascinating and dynamic as Habitat and Griz Grobus. As mentioned above, Roy is clearly content at showing us snapshots of these worlds and galaxies, allowing the reader to piece the connections together themselves, rather than dump lore and backstory on top of us. It's a great approach and everything I could have hoped for after Habitat. Roy's work continues to impress, and I can't wait to see where he goes with it next.
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Jack Harvey 2023. The Envoy and The Warrior (c) 2023 Simon Roy. Images used under Fair Use.
