3 Keys #3 // Review
A young woman and her menacing white tiger warrior run into The Crawling Chaos. It would be insanity to follow the powerful Lovecraftian outer god through a rapidly vanishing portal. The white tiger knows this. If the young woman does, it doesn’t stop her from doing so in 3 Keys #3. Writer/artist David Messina mixes fantasy action with a few different shades of horror in an issue that seems to be crawling around beneath the massive movements and motions of great power. If the specifics of the plot seem a bit lost, the center of the story feels strong enough to carry the readers’ interest in both script and art.
Diving through a portal between Yog-Sothoth’s arteries into the multiverse is a real stomach-churner. Noah’s first reaction to being in a barren and surreal world of dreams? She takes a selfie. Theon the white tiger doesn’t have the luxury of that kind of distraction as he knows that something is most definitely wrong. A couple of massive butcher beings possess a key that Noah and Theon need. Noah will have to take care of the Black Pharaoh’s Butchers while Theon deals with other matters elsewhere.
The intricacy of the backstory feels densely impenetrable. In theory, the Lovecraftian entities that slosh around in the background of the story feel true to the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft. The gods of Lovecraft don’t give a damn about the concerns of mortals or mortal readers. They have too much going on between them to make much sense in a story that feels emotionally engaging in the foreground. There is tremendous danger and fury going on in realms of great power. Much like Noah, the reader is along for the ride.
There’s no way that Messina’s story would work with any artist other than...Messina. There’s a compelling contrast between the wild-eyed Noah and the regal power of Theon. The strangely otherworldly atmosphere of a dead dream world feels cool, blue, and profoundly dead in a way that forms a dazzlingly surreal gravity on the page. In places, it’s almost haunting. And the plot might not be totally clear, but the dreamy pull of the page in drama and action moves everything along in a deeply engaging way. It’s all so deliciously dark. No need to concern oneself with the bigger issues. There are a couple of butchers to deal with in the dream world.
It’s very rare that the art does this good a job of covering for a story. The story doesn’t really worry itself too much about whether or not it is making any sense to the readers. And it doesn’t really have to. It matches the mood of a Lovecraftian vibe so perfectly in this respect. So often it is the case that authors working in Lovecraft’s realm slip and think of the deities as being actively evil. It’s nice to read something that moves in circles big enough to be truly apathetic to the concerns of mortals. There’s big stuff going on. Mortals don’t matter in the scope of 3 Keys.
