Realm War: Age of Darkness is Zenescope’s 12-part series that takes place after the four Realms have fallen and the Age of Darkness has started. The Dark Queen begins to merge the realms with earth and now almost the entire world is consumed only leaving the North American continent as the last bastion of resistance. It’s up to military and a few pockets of resistance that feature the Grimm tales character to try and figure out how to stop the Dark Queen and completing the entire merge of Earth. Realm War: Age of Darkness start off very slowly since it’s a twelve part story arc and you can tell right away that the story will develop slowly in issue one. The first issue does give quite a bit of backstory as to what is going on and slowly churns through different parts of the continent were the Dark Queen has already taken over to give you a general idea that things are really going to hell. Personally, I didn’t mind the pace at all, knowing that this will be a 12 part series it gives the writer enough time to expand on the story and it also helps the writer carefully tie up any loose ends while the story progresses. Sometimes in event books 6-8 issues feels like a lot but when you get close to the end many times the ending just feels rushed.

The art on this book is good, while many Zenescope books have great cover art the interiors tend to be a bit inferior to those great covers, in Realm War the art was highly better than I expected. The areas where one can appreciate the good artwork is in the fantasy character. The level of detail on those characters looks very good and stunning. Overall, very solid artwork.

Realm War is starting off and it has me intrigued initially. While the series will be a hefty twelve issue at least Zenescope is giving the story its space to be able to slowly develop the story and give it time to breathe rather than keeping compact. It’s an interesting idea and I will give this several more issues just to see where the story goes but so far a good book and intro to this epic.

Score: 3/5

Writer: Joe Brusha Artist: Sam Kivela Colorist: Maxflan Araujo Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment Price: $3.99 Release Date: 7/30/14 Format: One-Shot, Print/Digital