Unsounded

"So much lost... a bleak fate, remarkably shaped; but God did not wholly smooth away the contour of his touch, and you thought you saw his finger prints. You interpreted them; concluded there was some meaning. Now: slay a monster, defeat a queen, uncover a scheme - will Hell open its gate? Might you bribe your way out, your undoing undone? Then home, home, home, how they'll welcome the long lost soldier. [...] You've pursued easy meaning - a comfortable purpose [...] Such casual villains we are."

 

 

Within the introduction to Elric: Song of the Black Sword, Michael Moorcock addressed the default assessment of his classic sword&sorcery protagonist as an antihero. The author held Elric to be in fact a traditional epic hero, answering the call to adventure by what he understands as an appropriate response. He generally lacks the self-defeating perversity of Byron's Conrad or a 1990s Batman incarnation. It's just that Elric's baseline for right and wrong, based on his breeding, ability, decadent imperial formative milieu, tools at his disposal and the company he keeps, falls so far below our accepted moral norms that his heroic mindset yields monstrous solutions to any obstacles.

 

Ashley Cope's Unsounded had launched the year prior to me starting this blog, and from the start I'd been meaning to say something about it. However, this sword&sorcery yarn kept growing, in the breadth and depth of its dramatis personae, in visual detail and plot complexity, in philosophical ambition, until it has, in recent years, steadily outshined competitors like Kill 6 Billion Demons or Gunnerkrigg Court to stand at the top of its game. And as it's currently hitting its existing plot's climax, I thought an overview opportune. Before I get to complaining as is my wont, I just had to say kudos. Even it goes sour from here on out, just... congratulations to the author. Your work almost makes me want to start a new Patreon account to donate. You, madam, are a killer app.

Weirdly, the closest mental link the comic forms for me personally is not to other fant'sy drawrins, but to a 1990s novel called Les Thanatonautes, in which medical researchers manage to delve, technologically, into the afterlife. Unsounded makes a decent show of rationalized magitek, though in larger fights it tends to dispense with discernible rationalizations for its rules of magic in the interest of keeping the Industrial Light&Magic flowing, and once the giant monster shows up things rapidly turn to pure fantasy. Still, it holds to far more coherent cause and effect than you generally expect from such oeuvres.

This leads to another unexpected problem, and a rare one for webcomics (which normally fall in to the sin of cut-and-paste instead): visually, in later years, it sometimes gets too busy. The artist often seems be challenging herself not only by the increasingly baroque decor but characters' twisting acrobatics and object motion that's just begging for some 3D glasses. Unfortunately, this also makes some pages a bit challenging to look at, compounded by Unsounded's propensity (much like Dominic Deegan) for breaking down panels to illustrate breakdowns in the walls of reality. Maybe print/PDF versions might be higher resolution, but at desktop web browser size I've found myself wondering "is that a foot or an armchair" all too commonly.

More surprisingly, it's coherently and entertainingly written, with characters' voices well distributed between crass, combative, vivacious or verbose, expository or curtly transgressive as the situation necessitates. Ultimately, Cope's greatest advantage may lie in a greater vocabulary than your average art major.

My usual focus on world-building leads me to mostly appreciate the various factions and subcultures, the monotheistic crusaders, the polytheistic traditionalists, the occult cult and all the smugglers, soldiers, whores and sacrificial lambs. Most will probably get more invested in the individual characters, snarking, bloviating and badgering each other amidst frequent fireball battles. In fact much of Unsounded's charm comes from personalities never oscillating gratuitously to fuel plot twists, not suddenly becoming stupid so as to lose conveniently, or gaining sudden epiphanies so as to immediately somersault to designated hero status. Theirs are hard-earned and gradual revelations, deliberate and measured character growth. Even as they perpetrate great deeds, children still act like children, small minds retain their pettiness, and a hobbyist pops out of an otherwise transformative experience still bent on his obsession.*

 

Only two major characters so far would truly fit the antiheroic mold, whether viewed from outside or from their own self-hatred: Quigley, and especially #12, in whom The Imp of the Perverse rages uncontrolled. But the rest? A world of Elrics with bad educations, swinging away at what they consider flaws - which is to say, mostly each other. Playing at heroics.

 

Despite obviously struggling not to play favorites, Unsounded isn't completely immune to the chauvinist insanity of our time. My one previous mention of it fell among other examples overusing "stock bad dads" as moralistic punching bags, and that aspect has only gotten more pronounced since. Also, despite trying to square off two morally compromised factions, you do eventually get the unmistakable impression that dark-skinned matriarchal Cresce are the flawed heroes while pale patriarchal Alderode are the (i?)redeemable villains, that Cresce's sins are symbolic (limited in scope, or merely icky but harmless, passive decadence whose downside is never displayed) while Alderode's sins are pervasive, aggressive, deliberate violence and plunder, and overall the world's shit but you'd damn well better remember who the morally superior breed is, capisce? Still, it steers relatively clear of the fanaticism seen in today's society at large, and every time you think it's getting on a high-horse, Unsounded manages to provide counterpoints.

 

In fact, I would principally fault it on the fallacy of innocence. The few overwhelmingly good characters tend to be a dog and most kids (Jivi/Matty/Sara/Siya/Ruffles,etc.) mischievous but helpful scamps instead of the sociopathic monsters children really are. Matty in particular serves as both source of their later repeated moral mantra and one of the schmaltziest Miserables in a very crowded field. Even the metaphysical side of the plot so far hinges on erasing bad memories, all gradually building up to a nasty suggestion of ignorance as world-saving virtue.**

Still, page for page this is as good as webcomics get, and a wonderful illustration (pun intended) of the medium's potential. Excellent work.

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* I win the prize for euphemism.

** Man, I have got to get around to reading A la recherche du temps perdu