Dragonhurtor #1
Ben Hutchings
Reviewed by Darren Hick

As a story, Dragonhurtor's not bad. Essentially, it's a medieval quest story involving villagers, dragons and the usual elements of the genre. I'll sum it up for brevity's sake: Town attacked by dragon; town seeks hero; hero shows up; hero goes off to find dragon's lair; hero turns out to be a fraud and chickens out. I don't want to give away the next few episodes, but it's of the same mold. Despite its essential simplicity, the plot involves a lot of digression and scene-jumping, but manages to hold together pretty well. The scripting's not bad either, if you can handle the gratuitous obscenities (they're used to effect, but serve to seriously restrict the series' audience) and sometimes-hokey puns (once in a while funny; usually not). Hutchings even pulls off a truly amusing stanza or two of poetry in the series:

Jod bless Dragonhurtor. Son of Diamond Fist!
He journeys through the darkness and the early morning mist.
He glides over jagged mountain tops and awfully muddy dirt.
No hardships can stop Dragonhurtor when bad things he must hurt.

Okay, he's no John Donne, but I cracked a smile. The central characters, meanwhile, aren't too well-developed, sticking to one or two particular character-elements apiece, but are at least distinguishable. In a nutshell, the story is serviceable. If it seems like I'm rushing through the literary elements of Dragonhurtor, it's true. I want to talk about the art. And since it seems to be where Hutchings places most of his efforts, I will, too...

Dragonhurtor goes to show that Hutchings is truly a talented artist. Not always, but quite often, Hutchings' work is inspired. He pulls off highly-detailed backgrounds and architecture replete with textured cross-hatching and pointalism worthy of Gerhard. His fantastic creatures, at their best, rival those of Richard Corben, even borrowing a bit from Basil Wolverton. His drawings of horses, birds, dogs and other terrestrial creatures pulsate with life (expect when they're dead, but even then...). Further, he's obviously studied the iconography of Japanese manga and the comics of the American underground. He knows perspective, and he knows how to use it to effect. He seems adept at drawing everything from underwater scenes (not an easy task in black and white) to exploding dragon turds (I can't say for sure what an exploding dragon turd would look like, but I reckon Hutchings' drawing comes darned close). Hutchings pulls off both movement and tableau, realism and iconography. I could go on.

The problem is, he uses it all. Now, there's a history in comics and animation of juxtaposing realism with iconography. The afore-mentioned Gerhard works with Dave Sim to achieve a working balance of the combatant styles in Cerebus, and Hergé pulled it off to tremendous effect in Tintin. And it's a longstanding tradition in Japanese manga and anime. But Hutchings combines the painstakingly detailed flora, fauna and architecture with the Corbenesque fantastica, with both Eastern and Western-styled iconic characters, and even an example or two of Terry Gilliam-influenced organic forms. It's too much: Three, four or more of these very distinct styles quite often show up in the same panel. Where Gerhard/Sim and Hergé are able to accentuate their work through the juxtaposition of style, Hutchings' work only manages to confuse and irritate the eyes.

Hutchings has potential - a boatload of potential - and, frankly, I can't quite conceive of how someone with such a broad understanding of comics art, iconography, and even storytelling, could produce a comic with such a single, outstanding problem.

Luckily, Hutchings continues to improve through the 3-book run: By the third issue, he seems to have figured out that, like a soup with too many ingredients, too many distinct flavors together in a single book are off-putting. He continues to advance and develop his approach to each style, while discovering which styles work together in the same panel. Dragonhurtor should be considered a work-in-progress, but is nonetheless (or, depending on your leanings, all the more) worth picking up (the third issue, at least, though you won't understand the story without the first two). Hutchings is one to watch out for, and with any luck, Hutchings will continue to improve his storytelling so that it catches up with his drafting skill. As I so often seem to say, only time will tell. I wouldn't bet the farm on any up-and-comer overcoming the obstacles of both the art form and the industry, but I'd probably be willing to put at least a couple bucks down on Mr. Hutchings.

Dragonhurtor #1-3 are available for $3.00 each (that's Australian Dollars, folks) from Geeen Comix, 5 Langridge St., Wanniassa, ACT, 2903, Australia. You might want to drop Ben a line at geeen@hotmail.com for further info.