Written by Chris Mancini
Art by Fernando Pinto
Foreword by Mark Waid
Published by White Cat Entertainment
Finally arrived in a collected graphic novel edition, the webcomic Long Ago & Far Away is a little engine that could, you might say.
Mancini, a writer, producer and editor who was a mainstay of Comic Book Nerds and is connected to the Starburns universe, crowdfunded this fantasy comedy (or is it comedy fantasy) and the masses have led to this trade paperback with an effusive foreword from Mark Waid, whose online publisher Thrillbent also is involved.
It’s easy to see the appeal of this story, with its comically twisted take on several fantasy tropes then mixed in with a Clerks-style present. (Yes, Clerks came out in 1994, which is 28 years ago. But you’ll see why I say this.)
A boy travels to a magical kingdom, gains a power sword, defeats an evil witch queen. We’ve seen this before. But what if that boy comes back to our world, tells everyone about what adventure he had, but no one believes him? We’ve seen that, too.
But what if that boy grows up into a depressed, 30-year-old jerk who lives with his mother and poorly manages a comic book store in New Jersey? And what if people from that fantasy world return, seeking him to fight one last, desperate battle?
Long Ago & Far Away doesn’t bring much new to this post-post-post-postmodern whatever-this-is we’re in with “geeky” pop culture. But it’s snappy, fast-paced and a fun, breezy read overall. You can gulp this story down happily, with all its in-jokes to comic book fandom and Kevin Smith/Joss Whedon-style reference jokes.
Unless you’re me, because I never much cared for Smith or Whedon even in their heydays? Never mind that society at large turned on Whedon once the underbelly of all his nerdboy feminist posturing was revealed, and Kevin Smith’s legacy was diminished as the hits stopped and nerdery became an industry.
Tere’s so much room for Long Ago & Far Away to be more than just a bunch of fun. Let me explain. And we’re gonna get into spoilers.
Waid, in his foreword heaping praise on this story, says that Hollywood should be beating Mancini and Pinto’s doors down to option this for TV or film. If this were a TV show or limited series, it might be worth it in order to dig deeper into some common tropes in this story that I couldn’t get away from and took me out of the story at times. Even though this story is a fun read, there’s a darkness underneath that I couldn’t get away from.
Jason, the grown-up and former Child Knight who once saved Elvenwood, is presented from jump as the sarcastic, mean, geek bully who lashes out at everyone around him, including his two (and only) friends. They’re all dressed like it’s still the 1990s or early 2000s, further hitting on the Kevin Smith vibes. (For real, Pinto designed Jason with a hoodie and cargo shorts, his friend Phil in a polo over a long-sleeve T-shirt, and Marla dresses like Whip-Smart! era Liz Phair.)
But back to Jason. He’s thin-skinned, slovenly, lives in his mother’s basement, and snarks on a little boy who enters the store looking for Archie comics. (As if any comic book store today can withstand turning children from their doors.) His mother both dotes on him and is resentful that he hasn’t moved out yet.
And did I mention that Jason is fat? I’m sorry, “out of shape”? There are some jokes about his overeating, though Mancini also tries to connect that to his self-loathing and, perhaps, ennui about this life since returning to the real world. Which includes some actual trauma because his parents split and put him through years of therapy because he kept insisting on this Elvenwood fiction.
All of this is ripe character territory, but I’m tired of fatness being connected to pathological behavior. Why can’t Jason be fat because he’s fat? And when Jason eventually comes around to become the hero Elvenwood needs, his cave-from-The Empire Strikes Back moment packs some emotional punches. However, it lacks the conviction of an Avengers: Endgame that kept Thor fat when he returned to heroing rather than working some kind of magic weight loss.
So it becomes a tricky calculus to make Jason despicable and misguided, sad and wronged, in order for the reader to root for him when he eventually will make that face turn and go save his friends and an entire world. But before that, Jason bails on his friends and the world immediately, giving up the power sword via bargaining for sex from the villainous witch queen.
This entire bit is meant to be funny, but it just felt gross to me, even though I’m sure plenty of nerdboys out there would high-five him over it. It’s one of the ways in which this book tries to poke at stereotypical fanboys while also despising and sympathizing with them. (The jokes about Zack Snyder, for example, clearly pitch this to an above-it-all kind of geekster.)
Never mind that Marla aka “the girl” is imprisoned in the witch queen’s castle and overhears the entire sordid affair! But it’s OK, because she’ll get the hots for the sexy bad guy knight in black while still carrying a torch for Jason that gets solved by story’s end because reasons. Marla even gets to carry out Jason’s quest for a while, because she’s the one with ambition. She wants to move to New York and attempt to become a comic book artist. (Do people still do that anymore? Or use “troglodyte” in a punchline?)
All of this said, the book has a lot of fun bits. Lord Montleban, of course, is an easy fan favorite as a sexy, black knight bad guy who arrives on Earth and immediately gets a hot car, a pair of hot babes, and winds up in Hollywood. Or when Jason shows Elvenwood’s connections to C.S. Lewis, the Brothers Grimm and J.R.R. Tolkien. And a twist in the epilogue that nearly redeems a bit from earlier in the story.
Fernando Pinto’s art embraces the cartoony first and foremost, displaying a lot of modern, anime-influenced touches with plenty of stuff that reminded me of Evan Dorkin, though missing a lot of the detail of his work. But, for the life of me, I can’t get behind Pinto’s overabundant use of hash lines across every character’s nose, in nearly every panel, for no good reason. Or he’ll draw a circle where the point of a nose would be, or sometimes just a bunch of diagonal lines where the entire nose would be. Just learn to draw a nose, man! It’s deeply distracting and muddies up the faces, making this comic feel more like a bunch of sketches than finished art.
These are my quibbles, but ultimately Jason’s arc involves him letting go of resentments and embracing the Child Knight within. Of putting away childish things, while hold on to childlike things. If only Jason had to make more amends for how badly he’s treated people close to him. Maybe Marla is turned off from Jason once and for all after initially abandoning her in Elvenwood. Maybe when Jason voices regret to the king of queen of Elvenwood, they don’t hush him up right away.
Moments such as those are where this silly, fun story has the guts to grow up.
Grade: B-
