I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I’ll be back for more of this comic. Even though the first arc is a mess–and this accelerated wrap-up issue, which plays more like a movie trailer than a comic book, isn’t really successful, Naifeh does do some serious damage control and potentially plugs a lot of leaks.

And then the dragons show up. I suppose the “regular” cast returns too, but the dragons are a bigger deal. Naifeh doesn’t do the battle scenes well, not the big ones. The lone guy going out to fight death knights, sure, but he doesn’t do the scale. And there’s lots of underdeveloped filler. Night’s Dominion…

I’m not sure Naifeh is aware people read other comics besides Night’s Dominion. This issue is a bunch of battle scenes, a bunch of characters, a bunch going on; I have no idea what any of them have to do with the other. There’s some excellent art, but it’s a messy, messy jumble. Naifeh’s either…

There’s a lot of intrigue and a lot of characters, but Naifeh gives the Night a good plot. It’s independent of all the riffraff she’s been hanging out with, it ties into the opening cliffhanger resolution, it moves through the issue. It’s overfull, busy, but fairly strong.

Naifeh expects a lot from the reader, just in terms of keeping up with the story. There’s not a lot of content, just a lot of action and expository banter. The art’s imprecise and the characters are way too thin. The series is already stumbling too much.

Here’s the strangest thing about the first issue of Night’s Dominion–it goes on forever. Ted Naifeh goes on and on and on trying to setup the story and he never quite does. He raises a lot of questions, but the hinted answers aren’t really as interesting as they need to be. The one time I…