Sonata #11 //Review
A few people confront the immensity of their god for a cataclysmic...conversation. Things are about to get heavy on a distant fantasy planet as writer David Hine and artist Brian Haberlin's Sonata makes it to the end of significant conflict in the series's eleventh issue. The thick, ponderousness of the backstory finally breaks a bit in a drama between a man, a woman, and a towering god in a beautifully desolate alien landscape. There's a lot of other stuff going on here under the weight of tremendous back story, but once that clears-up, there's surprisingly striking drama resting beneath it.
Sonata and Pau are two members of rival nations on a planet with a history bent around the desires of massive intelligences that had been gods to them. Those intelligences had suffered from sleeping sickness, but they have the opportunity to awaken in vessels of humanoids who are hearty enough to survive the planet's atmosphere. What happens though when the gods' humanoid meat suits don't want the immortality that would come along with being possessed by a powerful being? God and mortal alike have a lot to learn in an issue that is seated firmly in moody, largely action-less drama.
Hine has a great deal of story to rush through here on his way to the cliffhanger that emerges on the final page. So much of the story feels so completely unnecessary. Granted...Hine MAY be setting-up backstory on the world of Sonata that will emerge in later issues. Still, so much of the backstory delivered here is so totally irrelevant to the central conflict of the issue that it might as well be footnotes in blocks of text at issue's end rather than lengthy bits of narration accompanied by panels of illustration. The drama between man, woman, and god is a lot more interesting than the rest of it and well worth the issue's cover price.
Haberlin's rendering of Sonata's fantastic world continues to be appealing even when the story feels stiff. Some of the awkward stiffness of the poses detract a bit from the drama that Hine has written, but the issue's overall mood remains intact from cover-to-cover. The conversation between man, woman, and towering god is particularly impressive. It might feel stiff in places, but Haberlin has done one hell of a job in framing an in-depth conversation between a couple of humanoids, something as tall as a small mountain and a tiny, little fairy. (Yeah...it gets a little weird before issue' end.)
Powerful galactic beings that might as well be gods interact with the insignificant, little creations meant to feed their infinity. There are definite shades of Lovecraft in the scripting here, but it's mixed with a pulp sci-fi/fantasy that could be appealing if Hine and Haberlin were able to tweak it just a bit. Given the fact that there is as much narrative momentum as there is in this 11th issue, Hine and Haberlin might just make it to something truly interesting.
