By Joshua Williamson (Author), Andrei Bressan and Adriano Lucas (Illustrators), Image Comics (Publisher)

> Review by Michael Hoffert Jr.

A year ago, young Mikey Rhodes mysteriously disappeared while he was playing catch with his father. His disappearance has torn his family apart, leaving his parents’ marriage in shambles and his older brother angry and alone. Life is misery without Mikey...until he returns one day as a six-foot battle-hardened barbarian with a giant sword and a full beard, several years older than when he vanished. Is this berserker really Mikey Rhodes? What happened to him while he was gone? And most of all, is everything he says true? What follows is the opening salvo of Joshua Williamson and Andrei Bressan’s epic with one foot in the real world and one foot in the fantastic. Williamson is able to deftly balance the unfolding, realistic family drama with the grand-scale sword-and-sorcery world-building. All of the characters are likeable and relatable, even when their situation has more in common with Lord of the Rings. Bressan, meanwhile, is just as skilled, beautifully depicting regular people with the same skill as h does dragons, demons, and fairies. Together, both writer and artist create one of the most engaging comics to come along in a while that will leave the reader in knots, wondering what’s next for the Rhodes family, with satisfying twists and turn along the way.