About the Mangaka
The writers and creators are De Filippis, and Weir, a husband and wife team who are more famous for their work with Marvel and DC Comics. As was several independent comics, and plot lines used in various cartoons. Destiny’s Hand is their second attempt at an OEL, the first being Amazing Agent Luna, which was released at Seven Seas launch. They have a website which is moderately updated.
The art was done by Melvin Calingo but I couldn’t find anything beyond his working for a filipino magazine called Comics Clash.
About the Manga
This was the second OWL ordered by mistake, and while it lacks the feel of Hollow Fields, was still an excellent read.
The art wasn’t quite right for me. While its no where near as bad as I’ve come to expect in most OEL’s I did notice that several times faces just looked wrong.
However I will say that while it’s got a decidedly western feel to the art, it looks pretty awesome at times.
The character designs are well drawn for the most part, and while there were a couple I didn’t like they were of characters not really of much import, so it worked out okay.
Olivia is just awesome, no other way to describer her. When we’re first introduced to her I was impressed with how strongly developed she was, the character design only had subtle changes over the course of the volume to account for the change in age, and station.
The other characters were the same, though as I said occasionally the art for the faces was pretty bad, and they looked a bit squished. However those were only a few occurrences and didn’t hinder it really. They just stand out because of how well the rest is drawn.
The story was what was a bit of a let down for me. While it’s not a bad story, it practically screams Pirates of the Caribbean and Cut Throat Island. While they may have gotten their inspiration from these movies, I do wish they had gone for more variance, rather than just mixing the two stories together.
As I said though, it’s not a bad story, and once you get past the blatant rip offs in the story, it’s actually a fun read. The story flows fairly well and fluidly, though a bit fast. However the speed was to be expected since it’s only three volumes, and covers a rather short period of time.
I would like to have seen another volume dealing with the events after the end of volume three, which ends a bit to abruptly.
Unlike Hollow Fields there are no extras in this series, and I think that’s a shame since concept art and stuff would have been great.
Overall, I liked this volume, though it has it’s flaws. Also it doesn’t quite make my Essential Read list. The reason being I find it lacks re-readability, as In on my second and third read through I found it less interesting and exciting. When I did my fourth read through I found myself easily distracted and gave up half way through. However it is worth reading at least once I would say, and think if you have some spare cash to get it.
Also do not buy the individual volumes, since for some reason SSE decided not to release volume three, and chose to abandon it after volume two, then release it as a full omnibus edition. So only buy the Omnibus Edition or you’ll just be wasting money.
A bad move IMO, and a bit of a slap in the face for fans who bought the first two volumes individually.
Where to Buy
January 5, 2010 @ 23:38.
The original extras from book 1 and 2 of the individual Destiny’s Hand releases couldn’t be included in the omnibus due to the third book running extra long. They are available in the kindle ebook editions and we have a number of them up on Gomanga.com. Thanks for the kind words about Destiny’s Hand and Hollow Fields.
Adam Arnold´s last blog ..Amazing Agent Luna