I’ve commented before about Cullen Bunn’s prolific nature and general creative range. The man just loves to write comics, and be it horror or more action-adventure fare, he usually tells compelling, character-driven stories.
But with Arcana Royale, Bunn may have doubled down in both the best and worst ways possible.
The premise alone is fairly Bunn-esque in nature. Hudson Tremaine is a card player of the highest caliber, who is tapped by a mysterious group of people to play the Arcanos Mysterinos alongside a smattering of supernatural players. The prize? The ability to reshape reality, it seems, which may or may not better than straight cash.
Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
And, sure, it’s a generally exciting gimmick (press has described it as “The Sandman meets Rounders“). But I’m a little curious as to whether we can get four truly solid issues out of a card game. The debut balances compelling backstory with the game itself, but I’m already nervous if that dynamic can be sustained over three more issues when the card-playing already feels a little thin in terms of carrying the story and having the weight to stabilize the narrative.
That significant enough issue comes as the game itself is quite novel (almost like poker meets tarot cards) in a move that speaks to how inventive and refreshing this world is — at least on paper. It creates a dynamic early on where there’s a lot of potential and energy, and that does a sense of momentum to the proceedings (even as you wonder if subsequent rounds will feel as robust when the stakes are really high and demand peak intensity).
It’s a dynamic furthered in the general look and feel of this world (courtesy of artist A.C. Zamudio, colorist Bill Crabtree, and letterer Josh Reed). Visually, Arcana Royale balances the many genre interests that have defined Bunn’s career. It’s not straight horror, even as we get some particularly great character designs (like a giant sock monkey but also your more “standard” eldritch-ian terrors). It’s also not straight noir, even as it nails those seedy vibes and profound human emphasis, or action adventure (despite having some really solid fisticuffs for what’s basically a magical card game).
Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
That dichotomous quality does wonders for Arcana Royale as it places it between ideas and contexts in a way that opens up some real possibilities for this book to then hopefully develop. There’s this sense that, at least visually, all things are on the table, and that as this book progresses, the world may extend to bring in new horrors and/or counterbalances and show us the real depth of this game. That would go a long way to addressing my issues with this book’s conceptual longevity, and give us new sorts of players and set pieces to draw out this game and make its wagers seem all the more important and wonderfully complicated.
For now, though, if you like kooky creeps and weird monsters, Arcana Royale has enough visual heft to bring most readers into this layered world.
But even if there’s some real kooky magic to this book — not to mention some other wonderful fantasy/sci-fi tropes to add texture — the ultimate appeal will be the humanity at this book. Even if Bunn-led stories can fall pray to overly shiny gimmicks and genre trappings, he always writes deeply solid characters. And in Arcana Royale, that’s Hudson, who has moved so far on the nihilism spectrum that everything’s pretty much a big ol’ joke. Which is a really great perspective if you’re playing magic poker, and Hudson already feels like she’ll be a tough nut to truly crack.
Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
There’s clearly some pain/grief there, and she hides it in a way that demands our attentive digging. Still, at least to a tiny extent, Hudson does have some two-dimensional tendencies. In some parts, she comes off perhaps a touch too dispassionate, and that kind of disregard may not be addressed fully enough to make her an active player in this game. At the same time, her reasons for playing the scariest game of poker ever — having been recruited by a mystery team of humans — is also interesting if only in that it lends a little mystery to chew on.
So while the art gives us scares and gore alike, it’s the narrative and character work where the real excitement and delicious uncertainty ultimately rest.
What we really get with Arcana Royale, then, feels like a snapshot of the ups and downs of Bunn’s overarching career. The gimmick is there, and it feels exciting even as you partially wonder if there’s substance to be found or it’s just some ploy before it fizzles or fades into the background. The lore is of equal interest and strength, and the world is fleshed out even if sometimes all that truly seems to matter is our lead.
Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
And we get the promise of deeply effective storytelling — this book is about what we’d risk for a new start and the way all of life’s a wager — even as sometimes such lessons/insights may not need all this razzle dazzle. (If anything, Hudson’s whole shtick would also work in a “normal” high stakes poker game, and in that way the genre stuff can feel a little secondary.) Again, though, the art team are there to make things feel appropriately weird and/or spooky, and so what we get is a solid experience even if we know it’s a tad disjointed or in need of more time for things to really click and coalesce.
All in all, it’s a good enough start for another Bunn-penned tale of supernatural hijinks amid a study of humanity’s true resilience. I want to see how pivotal the game itself is versus just being a thing to balance the backstory. Similarly, Hudson is already a great lead, and the world feels properly attuned to this multifaceted gimmick, and those things also need to further develop to make this story truly worthwhile.
But for now, Arcana Royale has the upper hand, and I’ll gamble on a few more rounds to see if it’ll stand out amid Bunn’s sturdy bibliography.
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