Review by Frank Plowright

Sorolla is a middle-aged Spanish soldier with plenty of regrets about his life when part of an expeditionary force led to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsular by a friar’s ravings about gold in the jungle. It’s 1512, and for the Spanish the lure of gold on the American continent is so addictive they’re ignoring the friar’s additional warnings about demons and hidden cities as he died. Sorolla is more practical and less inclined to be swayed by riches, so entirely pessimistic about the eventual outcome.

Alex Vede is best known for layered single illustrations, but it’s a talent readily transferred to comics with a pleasingly retro look, the art scratchy, escaping panel borders, on faux-parchment paper and with extensive use of random toned colour shapes. There’s a roughness to all his people and the faded colours add to the feeling of times long past, while there’s a suitable homeshod mystique about the silent supernatural creations that manifest. Not as appealing is the choice of upper case typeset lettering, although compensation when they appear are the pictograms for the indigenous people’s dialogue.

After witnessing the callous attitudes of the Spanish when it comes to slaughter, there’ll be little sympathy for what comes their way, but Sorolla takes a different journey, a path to the redemption he seeks.

Vede is providing a morality tale, a simple one when all is said and done, and rapidly consumed to boot, but it engages at a primal level due to the art. When myths collide with beliefs of invincibility coupled with greed what will win out?

Anyone entranced by the art will be satisfied with the story, and will delight in the pages of Vede’s designs and sketches rounding off an attractive hardcover package.