Warning: This Article Contains SPOILERS for The Last God #11
With the end in sight for Dark Souls. In fact, with its hideous massive monsters, unspeakable acts of physical and emotional violence, and an on-the-ground experiential perspective of inter-personal horrors, it seems like Johnson and Federici are injecting their own fiery, devastating energy into this paradigm, resulting in an even more hardcore metal take on the genre that feels like Dark Souls on steroids.
The Last God began Lord of the Rings tale, with Queen Cyanthe and her husband King Tyr presiding over the kingdom of Tyrgolad they claimed to have saved by killing the Last God of legend, a primordial being of pain whose abilities included being able to spread “The Plague of Flowers”, a grotesque plight which simultaneously kills and resurrects any who catch it as monstrous, eldritch beings under his control. With its vast history, multiple perspectives on power dynamics and cruelty, and intensive supplementary materials which only add more questions when it attempts to explain the history and rules of magic in this world, the series immediately drew comparisons to Dark Souls with its similar story-telling techniques.
The Dark Souls series takes place largely in the world of Lordran and follows an unnamed undead character, as all human characters in the world of Dark Souls are plagued with the “curse of undeath”, as they attempt to reach the Kiln of the First Flame, the place where magic and life originated from in that world. Dark Souls takes place thousands of years after the height of this civilization, and so the player can only glean snippets and glimpses of what has happened over the millennia that led to the world’s current state of ruin. Reading between the lines, it becomes clear to the player that whatever power held Lordran was likely an abusive and evil one, despite appearances of grandeur. That said, the hero is also portrayed as morally ambiguous, with shades of grey permeating the moral make-up of the tale.
The symbolism of Dark Souls and its malevolent world is echoed in Johnson’s tale, including King Tyr’s damning of his own son to a life of gladiatorial combat as a slave, the original party’s betrayal and murder of the mystical Fey in an effort to kill The Last God, and the generally despicable actions and deceptions performed by the former of the fellowship that took down The Last God. Punctuated with raw, untamed visuals of dark fantastical landscapes and horrifying, bloody battles against eldritch monsters, the series takes everything that made the videogame such a heart-rending experience and translates it flawlessly into a comic story that becomes greater than the sum of its parts when coupled with the emotional resonance of its characters.
The Last God #11 is on sale now wherever comic books are sold.
