ARTIST ELITE PRESENTS Vol. 1 #1 review – Three for One

• ‘Lost Serpent Prince’
• Writer/Artist: Brett Booth
• Inker: Sal Regla
• Colorist: Andrew Dalhouse
• Letterer: Zen
• Editor and Logo Designer: Jess Ruffner

• ‘Final Boss’
• Writer and Artist: Tyler Kirkham
• Art Assist: David Miller
• Colorist: Ifansyah Noor
• Letterer: Zen
• Logo Designer: Phil Smith

• ‘SandWenches’
• Concepts: Alé Garza and Howard Cadmus
• Story and Script: Alé Garza
• Artists: Alé Garza and Sanju Nivangune
• Letterer: Zen
• Logo Designer: Phil Smith

Thanks to Shawn Hudachko with Artists Elite Comics for the review copy!

Artists Elite Comics is a new comic book publisher that allows creator owned artists to publish their own stories. If you like to sample stories before making a big investment, this issue is worth a look, as it has the first installment of three of their upcoming titles. If you are looking for self contained issues, you will likely be disappointed, as each story ends just as things start getting interesting.

The three stories, Lost Serpent Prince, Final Boss, and SandWenches are strikingly different which is to be expected as they each have different creative teams (with the exception of the letterer Zen who does triple duty, and Phil Smith who designed the logo for 2 of the 3 stories).

Lost Serpent Prince’s art style reminded me of 1990s comics, with characters full of bulging muscles and skin tight costume (the dialogue winkingly acknowledges its likely inspiration). This story manages to jam a lot of backstory and worldbuilding into its pages. There’s also some nifty action sequences.

Final Boss is the most curious of the three. While I thought this was the start of the story, the segment starts with a ‘previously in’ page referencing prior events (Editor’s note, the prior events took place in an issue that was released via Indiegogo). Luckily this page fills us in on what happened previously. The story then settles in to an interesting flashback sequence before picking up with the main story.

SandWenches is a brightly colored space adventure filled with glossy art and food puns. What do I mean by food puns? Well, there’s a flying pickle-cycle thingy. The art and few panels of dialogue manage to inject the characters with more personality than you’d think was possible in the limited pages the story fills. 

This issue has curse words and some violence (think eyeball shooting out of a head) that may warrant parental discretion. If you are looking to sample some new comics, Artists Elite Presents Vol. 1 #1 is a great way to try multiple stories at once. The stories are varied enough that there’s a good chance one of them will spark further interest in it’s readers.

Artists Elite Presents Vol. 1 #1 is set to be released on July 19th, 2022 but it can be pre-ordered now through Comics Elite Comics or your local comic book shop. There are multiple covers available so pick the one that catches your eye the most…or all of them if you’re a completionist 😉

The second issue of the series will contain installments from three new series, ‘Darkskulls’ from Ben Templesmith, ‘Belong’ from Freddie Williams II, and ‘Seraph and the Seven’ from Ryan Kincaid. Look for it in your local comic book shop on September 6th, 2022.

Are you going pick up the comic? Feel free to leave a comment below or chat with us on Twitter at @TheConCollectve!

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