Fantasy

Dawn | Lucifer’s Halo

Rereading this series brings back a great deal of memories. Dawn was one of my oldest looks into the independent publishing world of comics in the mid 1990s. The landscape at the time was rife with pure and unreadable garbage. From that desolate land there were a couple of shining beacons for the faithful that decided to remain and continue to read comics in general; these included Billy Tucci’s Shi, David Lapham’s Stray Bullets, Frank Miller’s Sin City and Joesph Michael Linsner’s Dawn. I remember Wizard magazine lumping this along with a number of other series in what they claimed was a Bad Girl craze at the time. They seriously missed the point as Dawn was a great deal more than just a pretty picture. It was an intricate world unto it’s own, JML’s masterpiece stands tall and proud over 10 years after it was originally published by Sirus Entertainment and recently recollected from Image Comics.

Although the series is called Dawn, this first story revolves mainly around the character of Darrian Ashoka, a man living in a post apocalyptic New York City. This isn’t exactly the New York we know, or even a work that we fully understand, things are not exactly what they seem. Demons and Angels roam the world freely. Gods and Goddesses are part of the landscape.

In what seems to be a weekly ritual Darrian and Jaynus set off to “Time Square Free For All”

Kill who you want, and take what you can

However this time, things are different. Darrian’s night is interrupted as he catches the eye of Dawn. He follows her up to the rooftop of a building where they see angels being slain by demons. After a night of passion, Darrian’s world is turned upside down as he leaves New York City to get into the “Church” aka Heaven. Thus begins the story of Darrian on his quest to find himself.

Meanwhile God has summoned Dawn to ask a favour. Dawn is the Goddess of Birth and Rebirth. She is not part of Heaven nor of Hell. There is something in hell that he wants back. It was an oversight. He want’s Lucifer’s Halo back. These two separate threads are directly linked, but I wouldn’t dream of telling you how.

The story is a layered one, filled with odd metaphors and quotations. The real intentions of the story only become clear much later on in the game, around the fifth chapter, but Linsner plants the seeds right from the first chapter, dialogue, actions, reactions and events, they all intertwine into this story, nothing is there by chance.

In the landscape of the mid 90s glut of rubbish comics, Dawn was a crowning achievement, because it had a story. As you can imagine though, what brought it into the spotlight back then was the awesome artwork that graced the pages. In what was a rare thing indeed, Dawn was a fully painted series, printed on coverstock. Each cover was/is completely striking and can easily be framed and put on your wall, yes the artwork is that good. All the colours pop of the pages and the character designs are second to none.

What’s completely clear as the nose on my face is that ‘Lucifer’s Halo’ was in fact a complete and utter labour of love. Linsner pours his heart out into every single page, every single panel and really tries his best to tell the story, by using his craft to great effect. The characters have expressions of supreme sadness, of contempt, of surprise, of glee and the range goes on. It’s a wonderful thing to find a craftsman that can handle this in manner that comes across as easy. It’s not easy, it’s called pure talent and Linsner has buckets of it.