Review by Karl Verhoven

The Kier family planned on a summer break in a remote lodge in a Swedish forest. Instead, writer Andrew Kier has been abducted by trolls for possible use as a blood sacrifice, while daughters Sommer and Winter Kier have rapidly learned how to use a mystical sword to fight their way through assorted mythical creatures.

Cullen Bunn and Christopher Mitten pick up where they ended Through the Blight. Sommer and Winter have rescued a number of people, but many more remain captive, including their father, so back into the dark cave they venture.

Bunn’s very wedded to the idea of the narrative being paralleled by scenes from Wier senior’s fantasy fiction, packed with heavy-handed portentous dialogue such as “In her quest to find her sister Elsethriel had damned herself. The ghastliness of Hell stretched out before the Wraithborn Queen. And she did not falter”. No matter how spectacularly Mitten draws these scenes he can’t disguise the generic captions. The point of the scenes is now revealed, and it’s not a great pay-off, leaving the feeling that The Autumn Kingdom would have been stronger for a more straightforward narrative.

Subtracting the scenes that don’t work, however, still leaves many that do. Sommer and Winter’s ability to work together and each spurring the other on during their trip into fearsomely unknown terror transmits well, and each threat is imaginatively designed by Mitten, with Francesco Segala’s colours adding so much, as seen on the sample art. It’s their visual creativity that elevates a relatively straightforward plot.

The better ideas don’t feature in a weak ending for a coming of age story, prioritising shock over the established family dynamics. Every page Mitten draws is worth seeing, but The Autumn Kingdom isn’t destined to feature in Bunn’s career highlights.