I have inspired the Imp.
DOBBY IS A FREE ELF!! :D
Good ol' @cryplectibles got me on a "Warrior Nun Areala" tear with one of his recent posts, so I've been having fun with that. Barry Lyga's run on that book is so damn good, and criminally underrated. I maintain he was ahead of his time in pushing the medium into areas it wasn't quite ready to explore as fully as he wanted to explore them. His "The Hammer & The Holocaust" story arc from WNA Vol. 2 hit me hard as a kid, since I was raised Catholic.
Thankfully he's still around, writing novels for the teen and YA markets that push just as many boundaries as his comic work. Areala was a great fit and entirely the wrong fit for him at the time, but at least it didn't wreck his career. Just wish AP hadn't fired him before he finished writing the Magic Priest mini-series for them. 2 out of 3 issues released, then the concluding issue dropped entirely due to "lack of sales".
Sigh. What might have been...
I never read any WNA, I just kinda lumped it in with the glut of T&A 90’s books. Are you telling me there was actually substantive material there!?! I may have to look at it one day!
There is, but you have to dig for it a little. Ben Dunn's original idea for it was very similar to his NHS stuff, where it was a completely silly concept given a very thin veneer of seriousness to ground it in reality. As long as that's what you like (and I'm not gonna lie, I love Dunn's stuff), you'll be satisfied.
Once he opened the series up to other writers with subsequent volumes in the on-going Areala story, and especially the side-series like Warrior Nun: Black & White and Shotgun Mary, there were a slew of authors both new and established who took shots at leaving their own marks on things. Barry Lyga succeeded, IMO, but his storytelling technique was the complete inverse of the way Dunn had set things up with the first two books/story arcs, and I think people didn't know what to make of it, so they just left it on the shelves.
WNA's got very few instances of nudity, and during the Rituals storyline there's an in-story adjustment to the Warrior Nun outfits as the Vatican feels the original habits expose too much skin, which I think is hilarious. I'm not sure if that was Dunn poking fun at all the other "bad girl" books, or if he was catering to an audience who complained about the occasional flash of thigh, but either way it was amusing. :)
Vol. 1 is your basic 'turn off your brain and just enjoy the pretty pictures' story. "Rituals", the follow-up, tackles some slightly more mature subject matter involving the rise of a Fourth Reich in the present day, and the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of World War II, but it's still got that Ben Dunn knowing wink of "Don't take this too seriously...it's still comics, after all."
Lyga took the reigns for the next six issues, which is Vol. 2, and it's far and away my favorite arc, with some serious 'shades of gray' and 'this isn't all fun and games' plots, along with the introduction of my personal favorite villain, "The Holy Man".
And if nothing else, the sixth and final issue of that volume, "Nor A Liar Run, Aware", is worth reading for the script alone. :)
That’s a full fledged review post in the form of a comment! I’ll have to add it to “the list.” Thank you!
My pleasure, my good man. As if you didn't already have enough to read... ;)