Patron Request: "Feast For a King" Live Blog Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Christ, that post title sounds like a Yu-Gi-Oh card

One of our several new patrons today (hello!) asked that I review the webcomic Feast For A King. I said no, because it's 6,500 pages and it would take me weeks, but we compromised and I'm going to live blog it instead. 

We start off with a content warning that's fairly extensive. I think it's way better to have a big content page at the start of a a comic than have one in the middle of a chapter imminently before the content. It lets people know what they're in for right at the start and doesn't disrupt pacing. In that spirit, let be start by saying I'm not going to be sharing any upsetting imagery here. That'd be a shitty way to beta test a new Patreon idea. Also no NSFW things, since I don't want to get in trouble with the Patreon Police. This is a blind Let's Read, so I don't know how big a deal that'll be. I also don't intend to read all 6,500 pages, but we'll see how it goes as it goes.

We start with a sleeping woman waking up on a platform to find that she's tied up and being threatened by an Evangelion angel looking-thing that's eating a dude. That's definitely a gripping opening. 

Our heroine attempts to escape the monster but her attempt does nothing...except indicate that this is perhaps going to be a horní comic with the way certain things are emphasized there. Is this woman wearing pants? I think so, but I honestly don't know and it's not outside the realm of possibility that she's not.

I do think there's an intentional artistic reason for the art quality becoming rapidly incomprehensible as the scene gets more chaotic. I'd go so far as to call it avant-garde and I can see myself coming around to defending this as genius. But I'm 20 pages in, and mostly I'm just having trouble following what's going on.

Our heroine - who is wearing pants, cool - is let go by the monsters. She's confused and so am I. Her neck started bleeding, and then her leg bindings turned into leg bracelets while her arms spawn normal bracelets. I'm starting to wonder if this is a dream sequence, but I think it's still just in medias res. 

Our protagonist, who I hope gets a name soon, wanders into a mysterious labyrinth. She's thinking about how weird this is and how weird it is that she's not freaking out about it. Some of her thoughts are thought balloons, while some of her thoughts are square narration boxes. Something about this comic is giving off enough of an air of competence that I choose to believe this is galaxy brain genius foreshadowing and not an idiot creator being inconsistent for no reason. Anyway our protagonist is as annoyed as I am that she doesn't have a name, and throws up, not noticing that she vomited up a human finger. So...she's one of the monsters, then? Foreshadowed that a little hard, if so, but again I think this comic is going to be good so perhaps a double twist. She means a worm monster named Aeschylus. I suspect that's a reference and google it. Aeschylus was the ancient Greek dude who invented Tragedy. Cool. 

Aeschylus pledges himself to the protagonist, claiming she is his savior, and then....gets shot? I think? This art is hard to follow. I'm told it gets better. Yeah, he's shot and killed by a man who "rescues" the protagonist. Pretty tragic. Maybe that's the joke that he's the father of tragedy by being friendly and immediately dying. I suspect he'll be back, though. End chapter one. 

You know what? That was a pretty good first chapter. I'm hooked into the mystery. Let's see if the comic can keep that energy as it slows down and starts explaining things.