By Dustin Cabeal
Not the beginning I expected when last, we left Godshaper. Usually, when you leave in the middle of a fight, you find a way to continue that fight in the next issue. If it were a Marvel title, it would backtrack and take the story from another perspective or flashforward and rewind its way back to the fight again. These are the easiest way to do things which are perhaps what make Simon Spurrier’s choice interesting and a whole hell of a lot more entertaining. Because easy is boring as fuck in comics.
The fight is over, and we find Ennay at a campfire telling his story to an unknown person. As the story wraps, we’re taken back to the confrontation in which Ennay is discovered unbeknownst to him. Back at the campfire, we learn that Ennay has set up camp with another Godshaper that he knows from back in the day. A rare occurrence since no town can have more than one Godshaper at a time. Clench is missing an eye and also caring for a little girl that’s been disowned by her family for being godless. Which when you think about it is a great bit of religious commentary.
There’s plenty of pages left to cover, but I’m not one to recap the entire story in my review. What is particularly great about this series is that Spurrier continues to develop the world and how it works. The tradition between Godshapers adds to the sadness of this world. I say sadness because this world is terribly racist, biased and disheartening. Much like our own world, it’s just a bit more obvious due to how it’s presented. It’s highly unlikely that Godshaper will have a happy ending, but at the very least we can hope that Spurrier leaves us with some message, a message worth knowing and carrying with us.
Jonas Goonface continues to be the driving force behind Godshaper. His artwork is full of passion, from the quick and intense romance between Ennay and Clench, to the final third of the book which shifts the tone a great deal. There’s so many little details that Goonface injects into the story like a little girl with two different shoes on. One showing how she should just be a little girl growing up and enjoying life and the other a representation of the world she really lives in. As beautiful as the artwork is, it’s sometimes a hard world to look at seeing what the characters are but through just for being born different. Kind of makes you think don’t it? I hope it does.
I have always found BOOM! Studios to be an interesting publisher. Sure they have their bread and butter licensed books, but unlike other publishers that use that same formula to pump out licensed crap (cough, think Hasbro, cough) BOOM! still, manages to publish gems like Godshaper consistently. I just more people would find and appreciate titles like Godshaper because it sometimes feels as if BOOM! can only have one book like this at a time. The point being, check out this series and tell others about it. Don’t, and I repeat don’t, go download it off some “help us pay for our server” site and try it out first before you support it. Take a chance, support it and try it at the same time because damn that’s the charm of comics sometimes. Buy it in print, buy it digitally, but buy it. It’s worth the money, but at the very least it’s worth your paid curiosity.
Score: 5/5
Godshaper #2
Writer: Simon Spurrier
Artist: Jonas Goonface
Letterer: Colin Bell
Publisher: BOOM! Studios