Maestros, Vol. 1

This black-humored, cheerfully violent fantasy saga opens with the gruesome murder of the Maestro, the despotic magician emperor of another dimension, leaving his disavowed Earthborn half-human son, Willy, heir to the throne. The roguish Willy boasts his own magic, along with a vague sense of morality. With the aid of his estranged mother, Margaret, and his childhood friend and protector, Wren, he seeks to recapture and bring at least an illusion of order to the Infinite Realms. The realms’ diversity of cultures include elves; demons; Backstabber, a talking sword; and a giant sentient sunflower named Gah’ree. Skroce, a cartoonist (The Amazing Spider-Man) and Hollywood storyboard designer (The Matrix), drops a huge amount of plot into this breakneck adventure through infodump dialogue, but it’s handled with such a light touch it’s forgivable. His fine-lined, psychedelic penwork and subtly diffused palette of bright colors pop off the page. Mixing the rebel-hero trope of caper movies with the questing knight of high legend, this fantasy series is rich with double crosses and wicked imagination. (Nov.)