“Wait, how do I get down from here?”
Dawn Of The Visionary Creation 2024-2025
Visionary Comics (2024)
CREATOR/WRITER: C. Edward Sellner
LETTERER: Jacob Bascle
Visionary Creation is the main Visionary superhero universe, from what I can tell primarily the years long design of C. Edward Sellner, finally made into a comic. For some reason trying to bring the actual page from Drive-Thru Comics for this comes with an error, but it was still in my library so I’m checking out.
The preview contains short tales from various titles in this shared universe, so we’re going to speed through these.
Things To Come
ARTIST: Gabriel Caitano | COLORIST: Ilaria Fella
Setting up what I’m assuming is a crossover event, various beings of different realities are called together by the Chronicler, who worries that reality is slipping into darkness, the people of their realities losing the ability to hope and dream. Each pledges to fight in their own way in their own realms of reality. It kind of reminds me of the movie version of The NeverEnding Story, feeling like a meta commentary on how darker, less magical, and less “heroic” some of our modern stories have become, but that could be me reading into things. This style of cosmic and conceptual beings has always been beyond me, and I’ve tried.
The Knight: “Out Of The Shadows”
ARTIST: Mario Torrisi | COLORIST: Paul Little
I guess the rest are going to be snippets rather than full stories. In this one, a hero in the year 2029 fights a bunch of baddies with a bio-weapon that’s about to wipe out humanity. The Knight takes out the goons before his enemy Charon fires a missile at him. The Knight survives, but the narration seems to indicate he dies this day. I see he has some kind of observer back-up, which I’m a fan of. I like the design. I might be curious to see more, but for a “Mature Readers” title there isn’t a lot of swearing or graphic imagery in the preview.
Monarch Of Manhattan: “Strange Kingdoms”
ARTIST: Rafail Ter-Stepanov | COLORIST: Steven Dellasala
An African(?) king braves a series of trials to reach an old prophetess to learn if his son will be king. He will, but in a place called Manhattan. This story is followed by a preview of the first issue, which I’ve already reviewed, and I could have used this to give me SOME explanation as to where the hero came from. I’m still not sure of way too many details.
The Legend Of Fire-Mane: “The Legend Forged”
ARTIST: Daniel Gate | COLORIST: Ilaria Fella & Periya Pillai
Now we move to the “Age Of Magic” time period, or reality. I’m guessing that the conceptual beings from earlier represent the different realities that Sellner came up with and wants to get out there. Can’t tell you much about this one. Someone in authority has a dream he insists isn’t prophetic because nobody has those anymore. The dream shows him fighting something else, but he awakens to learn something has claimed many lives, including someone he thought of as a son, and there are also wounded to attend to. Also, he asks for his armor and the snippet has him standing ready in his armor for battle. This told me nothing except this isn’t my genre.
Soulstar: “The Dreaming”
ARTIST: Gabriel Caitano | COLORIST: Ilaria Fella
Here’s a story that shows the difference between Sellner’s Visionary Universe and the larger “Visionary Creation”, like Marvel’s New Universe versus their regular or Ultimate universes, I guess. All we see is the title character on the cover smiling and pulling down his shades like he’s Johnny Cage from the Mortal Kombat franchise and a story snippet of him getting his tail whipped. Oddly this is the one with censored swearing despite the beating and spikes into the body that he keeps suffering. I can tell you nothing about this character, and that’s just bad preview selection.
The comic ends with text and image previews of the godlike beings that started the comic in their own upcoming stories, a listing of planned audio dramas, and further promos
overall
This is pretty ambitious for one writer and a handful of artist, creating not just one but three or four out the gate. I wonder if it’s a bit much to start on for such a small group. Even Eric July’s Rippaverse Comics is taking things slow and they make all graphic novels. I wish them luck. The art is really good and there seem to be some great ideas and characters here.
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