In THE MOON MAID: THE THREE KEYS #1, available from American Mythology on February 24th, 2021, a jungle warrior from the land of Va-Nah, under the moon’s surface, battles massive beasts and warring clans to protect her home.
The Details
- Written By: Mike Wolfer
- Art By: Miriana Puglia
- Colors By: Periya Pillai
- Letters By: Natalie Jane
- Cover Art By: Richard Ortiz, Bruna Costa (cover A)
- Cover Price: $3.99
- Release Date: February 24, 2021
Was It Good?
Yes, it was very good. We’re going to invent a new category called “perfect pulp” because that’s exactly how this book looks and reads.
The art is bright, imaginative, and fantastical. Even the trees and long grass are drawn with enough care to look both familiar and alien at the same time. You clearly get that the art team put the work in to capture the spirit of alien savagery so prevalent in pulp stories of the early 20th century.
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As much as comics are a visual medium, the writing is the highlight in this issue for one, specific reason – voice. Wolfer captures the tone and style of educated explorers relaying the incredible events as they unfold. If the book were narrated in a radio podcast, you could almost hear the narrator speaking in a clipped transatlantic accent from an old-time newsreel.
Presenting the story in such a matter-of-fact tone is what gives the story the authenticity needed for an Edgar Rice Burroughs story. It’s “perfect pulp.”
What’s It About?
[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]
We begin with an omnipresent narrator describing the events leading to a rocket ship crash deep within the bowels of the moon. Within two, simple pages, you get a plethora of callbacks and deep cuts to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s stories that will make any fan of the author happy.
The land of Va-Nah is a lush, vast, and dangerous continental land underneath the moon’s crust that looks more like South America or Africa than an alien world. The landscapes are awash with vegetation in shapes and colors that don’t exist on Earth, and their beauty is only matched by their hidden dangers.
Suddenly, we encounter the Loh-ee-nah, the Moon Maid, as she forages in the jungle for herbs and vegetables. Before long, Loh is attacked by a giant lizard that looks like a SnapDragon on the hunt for its next meal. Loh fends the beast off by shooting it with an arrow coated in a paralyzing drug.
With little dialog and a lot of action, you get a clear sense of Loh-ee-nah’s character and skills. She mocks the lizard with a slightly playful tone to let you know she was never concerned for her safety. She’s skilled with a bow and arrow, and she’s athletic enough to avoid capture from much larger predators. Loh is strong, smart, skilled, and capable.
When Loh goes to the river’s edge to wash off the dirt from her fight, she stumbles across a small group of Va-gas. They look like a cross between a satyr and an ogre with purple skin. The Va-gas see Loh as meat, but their leader spares her for information since they’ve been driven by their homes by an oppressive race called the Kalkars. Loh offers to help their only female who’s dying from a venomous bite, and they reluctantly agree to follow Loh back to her home for medicine.
What’s remarkable about this book is how much information is delivered in an organic way about different cultures, political conflicts, tribe dynamics, and setup for wherever the plot will lead next in just a few short pages.
We conclude the issue with the Va-gas following Loh back to her cave where much bigger revelations are waiting.
How Does It End?
Loh’s living quarters are anything but primitive. Loh owns possibly the largest storage closet in history. A new tribe arrives by the river.
Final Thoughts
THE MOON MAID: THE THREE KEYS #1 expertly captures the look, feel, and voice of classic pulp stories from Edgar Rice Burroughs. That art is high-quality, and the storytelling admirably pays respect to and builds upon the source material in a remarkably compact comic.
Score: 9/10
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