What is this book about?

An outlawed war golem with a very gentle personality (think Lenny from Of mice and men); an innocent, prepubescent, heir to great weapons of unimaginable power, a hermit scientist/wizard, a washed up mercenary, and a busty thief all thrown together against the faceless shadows of evil and their monstrous henchmen.

Created by Joe Madureira. Battle Chasers was one of the most popular comics in the late 1990s, but suffered from extreme scheduling problems, with an average of about six months between issues, including a delay of 16 months for issue #7. Madureira produced a total of nine issues in four years, a pace for which he was criticized. The last issue, #9, was published in September 2001 and had a cliffhanger-ending that was never concluded, as #10 was never released and Joe Madureira left the comic industry to pursue a career as a video game designer.

Why should you read this book?

You should read this book for the drama surrounding the character Sebastius Nefar, the book’s action sequences, and to oogle Red Monika’s boobs.

Gully the previously mentioned, “innocent, prepubescent, heir to great weapons of unimaginable power.” has an encounter with this character named Sebastius Nefar, who up until that point was your typical villain out to control the world. Nothing really special, nothing anybody hasn’t read before.

But towards the end of series you find out that Gully was completely unaware that her father had another child with another woman, who turns out to be Sebastius Nefar. And according to Sebastius, is the rightful heir to the legacy of their father’s unimaginable power, which are the gauntlets pictured in the first image of this post on the blonde girl.

Sebastius blames Gully for the unfortunate events that had befallen him when he was a younger boy. Because of Gully and her mother, Aramus (Sebastius’s and Gully’s father) left Sebastius and his mother to die by the hands of his own men.

Certainly the character sounds deluded much like most comic book super villains who play victim. “My daddy didn’t love me,” “mommy hit me,” “my brother used to rub oatmeal in my eyes…,” blah blah blah. But listen to Sebastius’s story:

Sebastius relives the tale for Gully in a later issue of Battle Chasers while he is imprisoned, explaining how the traumatic story unfolded. Upon adventuring in the woods pretending to be like his great father Aramus, Sebastius came upon a scene he was shocked and disgusted to see. His father, Aramus the deceiver, was with another woman who had a baby (Gully). Sebastius hated the fact that his father had left him with his mother to be with another woman and care for another child. The seeds of hatred were planted and grew to fruition when Aramus later came to visit the town where sebastius was living, not to see his family, but to burn and raze the town to the ground, and enslave the inhabitants that were killed. One of these was Sebastius himself, to which he called out to Aramus to protect him. When Sebastius had called to him “Father”, Aramus examined the young Sebastius further and denied that it was his son. He gave the orders to the rest of the men to enslave the boy and that was the last Sebastius ever saw of his father.

Gully was very much in denial over the accounts of the story, not wanting to believe the horrible stories about her heroic father. She continued not believing. However, Sebastius mentioned a keepsake in his story to which no one could have known of. It was a locket that he claims he saw given to Gully when she was just a baby. Gully continues to disregard his stories for lies but later reveals to herself the very locket.

It’s because of this that I feel sympathetic for Sebastius. And yes, even sympathetic for his feelings to kill the girl.

Now, granted, the series is unfinished and we don’t know the outcome of the creator’s original intention for how this story was going to play out, but imagine if it played out exactly how Sebastius describes. People going around looking up to, inspired by, and emulating Aramus but never having any real idea on who he actually was.

Now, these stories do take place in medieval times, albeit a different reality where magic, sorcery, demons, and goblins exist. But I can only assume that certain things from the real world still hold true in the Battle Chasers reality. And as far as my understanding goes, in medieval times in the real world adultery and child support didn’t exist. Or if it did, it wasn’t taken seriously. So I don’t blame Aramus for sleeping around and having multiple children and not taking care of all of them. I know that sounds shitty but I don’t. We are the product of our times. Just like, I don’t fully blame people who don’t recycle or still eat lots of meat. No matter what people tell them in this day and age they still believe that their habits won’t have an effect on their lives or others. So they continue to not recycle and still eat lots of meat. Even though we know recycling is good the environment and not eating lots of meat is ethically sound but people continue to do it. Until something happens that directly affects their lives that stems from their lack of recycling and eating lots of meat people will continue to live as per their opinion on what they think is right. Which, is why that even though I disagree with those people, I can only sympathize. Because who is to say that I am right about recycling and eating less meat? So while we live in a society where there are no laws against not recycling or not eating meat we still have a choice to do as we please. And as humans, we will always resort back to doing as we please. And it is this, in this regard, that I sympathize with Aramus. During this time period, adultery and no child support left Aramus free to pursue other women and other ventures. Which didn’t make him wrong…it just made him a product of the times.

However, that is why I recommended this book. Is because of the interesting conflict one might find with seeing eye to eye with the supposed ‘villains’ of Battle Chasers.

Not to sound cliche but, Sebastius is just misunderstood. It’s hard for me to completely agree with his idea on killing Gully to end his mental anguish. But, me being the extremist I am, what if killing Gully IS the answer. And the reason bad things in the Battle Chasers reality continues happen is because Gully wasn’t the rightful heir, but Sebastius was. Maybe there is evil because Gully was chosen. Does that mean killing her is the answer? I’m not sure, though, I’d warrant a guess that given the fact that she is alive and is the heir, Sebatius is willing to take the gamble that it is the answer. But I would have to do some deeper soul searching to determine if I agree.

Anyway, I apologize I went off on a tangent here. I am an extremist, and tend to see eye to eye with people who by societal standards I shouldn’t.

Seriously read this book. Madureira has a way of portraying an entirely unique take on a over used genre.

Buy it here.