Rose #1 Review (Image)

Rose Colored Glasses

Writer: Meredith Finch
Artist: Ig Guara
Release Date: April 12, 2017
Cover Price: $3.99

Image and Meredith Finch look to bring us yet another fantasy story with a powerful monarch and a few rebels working to fight back. To say I’m a little worn out on these fantasy stories would largely be an understatement. It seems to be the current trend with a new announcement from Image coming every other month. With that being said, I’m doing my best to go into this with an open mind as I’ve liked what I’ve previously read by Finch.

We start with some exposition as we find out there are these guardians in the world who rely on their bonds with “Khat’s” to protect the world. Other than the idea of the Khat’s the beginning really comes off as your regular dystopian fantasy style story and didn’t inspire much faith in me for the story. You get a story of a battle where evil won and they sought out all the possible dangers they saw to their rule.

We get a jump forward in time to where it’s been quite a few years since the last time those in rule have wrought fear and death upon towns in search of rebels or Khats. We meet our main character as she receives a gift from her mother and sets off to practice magic. Low and behold it is this exact moments that the Queen Drucilla decided to send her men to attack this particular village in search of Rebels. Luckily Rose gets back just in time to have a last second conversation with her mother before she dies.

After this we meet the Queen as her men return with the news of their failure to discover the rebels. It’s here where I feel we get one of the highlights of this book. We meet Drucilla who comes off as a particular level of ruthless. She seems driven for results and willing to kill those who don’t get them in an instance. It’s not exactly anything new, but it does come off done well with her level of sinister that is revealed.

Rose eventually meets up with the rebels the Queen is in fact in search of, and we see the next evil plan by Drucilla as the issue comes to an end. There is really not much to say around this part as it all comes together seeming very cliché and generic. Nothing here feels new and what little we see that is different than other’s from its genre isn’t really shown too much. 

For a first issue this really just doesn’t do much for me. The one highlight I get is the Queen Drucilla and the ruthlessness she has, but we see so little of it and it being cliché in and of itself just doesn’t do much for the book. We get a first issue that comes off as largely generic and just your run of the mill fantasy story.

Bits and Pieces:

If you’re not tired of the fantasy setting that seems to be Image’s main genre as of late this still doesn’t seem to do much to the genre in way of anything new and not completely cliché. It’s one highlight comes from the Queen Drucilla who in and of itself isn’t too far off from typical genre cliché’s.

5.7/10