‘Invisible Kingdom’ from Dark Horse — Space Opera Fantasy from Wilson and Ward

Writer: G. Willow Wilson / Artist: Christian Ward / Dark Horse/Berger Books Berger Books, the Dark Horse imprint directed by editor Karen Berger, has been producing some fascinating, utterly unique comics for a while now — LaGuardia and Incognegro: Renaissance come to mind. Their latest is Invisible Kingdom, written by G. Willow Wilson in her second comic post-Ms. Marvel with art by Black Bolt’s Christian Ward. Let’s talk Ward first. He has a style that is perfect for surreal future fantasy, with plenty of swirling colors and pops of pinks and neon greens. His people aren’t always very distinct, but their emotions always are, with the colors of the backgrounds giving you what their faces may be missing. In this case, where one of the main characters — Vess — has their face veiled, those backgrounds and supporting images at the edges of the frames will be very important. His action panels are wondrous, with a gooey flexibility to both letters and shapes to indicate motion. His illustration of a ship crashing into a moon is a case in point. SHOOM. Fitted to this extravagant color-explosion art style, we have Wilson’s restrained introduction. But that restraint does a line-drawing of the world we’ve found ourselves in, a line drawing ripe to be filled in by all the characters we’re sure to meet along the way. The other main character Wilson gives us — Grix — is as exuberant as Vess is sparse. Grix takes risks and gives orders with an expected space captain style. I can’t wa…