Review: Soulfire #7

If you listen to Comic Bastards podcast you know that my friends in the podcast have a love/hate relationship with writer J.T. Krul. For some reason every time I hear the boys talk about Krul its very polarizing and it seems that his writing is not very good. I decided to take a little challenge from the boys and give Mr. Krul a try by reading Aspen Comics Soulfire.

Soulfire #7 is a fantasy adventure where magic users create constructs to fight each other. In this issue, Onyx has entered Grace’s kingdom and Onyx is hellbent on destroying her kingdom and then rebuilding  her own kingdom from the ashes. The two mages have a huge fight and Onyx has the edge on the fight because of her new magic dragon that she has constructed. During the fight Grace is helped by Malikai. Malikai battles the giant dragon but it seems that everything that Malikai throws at the dragon is useless. Losing ground to the dragon and running out of options to kill it; Malaki deploys a desperate move by digging deep into his soul and using his deep darkness to unleash a series of undead against it.

The tactic works but it does not come with a price.  By unleashing this chaos magic the monster that came from his magic are nowdestroying everything in their sight. Grace and Onyx are accepting the fact that maybe Malakai might be adanger to everyone, but Malikai still claims that this was not part of hisdoing but by carefully looking deeper into the situation he concedes thatit is and the only way to stop his magic is by going insidethe darkness. 

After reading the issue I came out of  thinking that this was an okay read. The story was a bit simple and the issue consisted more of action than of plot. The action sequences were fun, and they felt like something from a cheesy fantasy movie which I did not mind at all. Would I go back and read the back issues or reread this issue? Probably not, but I can tell you that it was not the worst thing that I have read in a while. The art was very generic, it gave a vibe of nineties comics right away. I did enjoy the last panels where Malikai was in complete darkness. It worked to give a cool vibe of Malikai trying to fight his demons.

Overall, Soulfire was okay; nothing too boring, a lot of action and the art was pretty standard. If you follow the series the issue will be a continuation of were you left off otherwise not much else happened in this issue.

Score: 2/5

Story: J.T. Krul and Frank Mastromomauro
Written: J.T. Krul
Art: John Starr
Publisher: Aspen Comics
Price: $3.50
Release Date: 2/15/2012