REVIEW: Stone, the Awakening #1 - 4

Words: Brian Haberlin
Pencils: Whilce Portacio
Inks: Gerry Alanguilan
Colors: Dan Kemp
Review: Art Bee

Stone, the Awakening was first published in 1998 through Avalon Studios (a branch of Image Comics) as a mini-series to introduce the main character, mythos, and story before the launch of the main ongoing series. This story was created by Haberlin and Portacio, but the namesake of the main character was Gerry Alanguilan, a.k.a. Komikero, who has done extensive work all over comicdom. His work is known to me, but I never made the connection to this series, which has been living a happy life in one of my comic boxes for almost two decades.
It’s almost like finding buried treasure . . . sort of.

This story is based on a multiverse theory consisting of an infinite number of realities. Stone introduces the idea of magical stones called Agimats, existing in a finite number (50), able to bridge between the various realities and grant the bearer unique abilities. The bearers of the Agimats battle one another to gain honor and control of more stones. The creators have done an exquisite job of fleshing out and layering the storyline of this series. In actuality this entire story seems to picture schizophrenia.    

Gerry Alan is an actor on Earth and the bearer of a pair of Agimats. He stars in a television series called Stone (how the comic book has its name), and the show is laughably about the exact situation Gerry Alan lives as bearer of the Agimats. This is very clever. The creators should be very pleased with themselves for this idea; it is ingenious. Gerry starts to be mentored by his formerly invisible childhood friend, Rook, when his champion battles begin.
See . . . schizophrenia.

The big villain in this series is an undead being called Ranal (not making that up, and yes I thought the same thing). Ranal reminds me of a Skeletor and Mumm-Ra sandwich . . . you better know those names or I.C.E. will be coming for you. Ranal hears voices and sings the same song over and over.
See . . . more schizophrenia - sha-boom sha-boom, da da da da.

The artwork is very good collectively. Most of the panels are intense with detail and one of the best features throughout each issue is the colors. They offer a superb level of shades and depth to the artwork. The ink work is top notch creating amazing crispness. There are a few panels of lower quality that seem to convey the feeling of being rushed in the development process. My thoughts lead me to think this was with the pencils at the start of the process since the inks and colors look to be fine and unrushed.

Even though I really enjoy these comic books, there are a couple of things that really bother me. The first one is the typos. On page 7 of issue 3, Gerry’s mentor, Rook, uses the phrase “. . . an Earth with much lover gravity . . .” In the font used this would have been a hard one to catch, but on page 5 of issue 4, there is an “I” missing from the word “if”. That should have been an obvious woops that should have been caught.
The second thing that bothered me was the overuse of one cliché in issue 3. At the very beginning the main character introduces himself and says “I used to be . . .” Throughout the issue he reintroduces himself as a “used to be” or a “now”.  It gets really old reading the same thing over and over and . . . I am not going to do it to you to prove a point.

This was a very good mini-series, which lead into a short lived ongoing series. If you happen across any of these issues pick them up and give them a read. You may just agree with me on it.