But I don't get the sense that this story is anything more than an attempt to out tragedy Shakespeare, to be more violent than George R. R. Martin, to show us soft lily-livered modern folk how real shit used to be back before society made us wash our hands and file our taxes and the world was nothing more than kill or be killed, rape or be raped. Royal Blood feels like something that was created just to shock. The combination of beautiful art and atrocious characters is quite shocking, just not in the way that I think Jodorowsky intended.

There are ideas here that might develop into something clever and interesting but this first issue simply feels obvious and shallow. We know these people and what their varied skills, histories, and achievements were. The true challenge is to take these known quantities and expand them, enrich them, and turn them into something more interesting and powerful than the mundane histories we already know.

Overall this is a really enjoyable book and I can't wait to see the next two issues in this 4 issue mini-series. Alien Legion: Uncivil War delivers the goods and seems to be doing a great job of pulling the troopers of Force Nomad in new directions while also keeping them familiar and enjoyable. It maintains a solid formula that really delivers the goods.

The final issue of this arc promises to have some big-time action and possibly a good amount of heartbreak. Dixon and company have done a really solid job of building up this storyline and it's going to be interesting to see how everything falls into place. And who is going to be broken at the end.