Chasing battles with Joe Madureira
In 1998, Joe Madureira launched a fantasy comic with a title that helped sum up what’s so cool about fantasy: Battle Chasers. Scoff if you will, but at least the comic was honestwe don’t want our fantasy heroes to simply react to dangers, but rather to take matters into their own hands. However, Battle Chasers was not your typical fantasy comic.Battle Chasers starred four main charactersa despairing swordsman named Garrison mourning the death of his wife, a young girl named Gully who is searching for her father, a war golem named Calibretto, and a five-hundred-year-old wizard named Knolan. The quintet gathers to help take down a group of four powerful villains accidentally released from prison by a sultry warrior named Red Monika.Some have referred to the book’s blend of science and magic as “arcanepunk”an unwieldy word, but as good as any for trying to describe what’s so cool about the book. Of course, a big part of Battle Chasers‘s attraction comes from the fact that it was a passion project. Unfortunately, this was also responsible for the book’s biggest flaws, which were its scheduling delays. Over the course of more than three years (over thirty-six months), only nine regular issues were published. And the last one was a cliffhanger!So why should you check out a story without an ending? For one thing, the art is gorgeous. Joe Madureira was one of the first Western artists to bring a Japanese manga style to his work (although Fred Perry and Ben Dunn had both also been practicing the style on underground comics since the early 1990s). For another, Battle Chasers showed that creator-owned comics didn’t have to mean dull and cynical tirades against contemporary life. Along with J. Scott Campbell and Humberto Ramos, Joe Madureira helped create unique and self-contained stories that could be enjoyed by a wide audience without prior comic book knowledge.Fantasy fans can’t really be faulted if they’ve never heard of Battle Chasers beforeafter all, Madureira’s scheduling wasn’t exactly conducive to a unified marketing scheme. However, the hardcover Battle Chasers Anthology collection includes all of the issues in one place for the very first time, meaning both old fans and new readers alike can enjoy the memories of one of the most unique fantasy comics of recent memory.