The Midas Flesh #3

by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb

The Midas Flesh has turned out to be one of the most surprisingly entertaining mini-series to come out lately. It’s nice to find a crisp looking series that can successfully combine sci-fi, adventure and comedy so productively well. With the latest release of issue three, we aren’t even halfway done with this eight issue series and things are really beginning to heat up.

After the last issue, our team of explores (Captain Joey, “Fatty” Fatima & dino-scientist Cooper) have discovered the reason for the planet made of gold: King Midas’ body. Even though Midas has been dead for awhile, he is well preserved since even bacteria can’t touch him without turning to gold. They retrieved just a finger from Midas’ corpse and in doing so, accomplish their mission. Unfortunately things aren’t going to be that easy for our heroes. Ryan North, known mostly for his Adventure Time comics, has really put together an amusing and well written story that can be enjoyed by comic fans of all ages without seeming either too childish or too mature. The Midas Flesh is incredibly well paced and just a pure joy to read. It will be very interesting to see what North has up his sleeve for the last five issues of this series.

The art by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb is so unbelievably spot-on for The Midas Flesh. Their cartoon-like style still manages to carry a very detailed and clean feeling. However, it’s  the colors that actually make the already vivid art really pop. They use plenty of neutral and warm colors, but it’s in the way that they use them that makes them feel so intense. Now that we are three issues into The Midas Flesh, the one thing that really jumps out about the art is the consistency. Paroline and Lamb’s kind of dependable art style just enhances the already well written flow of The Midas Flesh. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say that the full page reveal at the end was a marvelous looking piece of art.

One can only assume the creators are having as much fun crafting this series as we readers are reading it. You can feel their hearts go into every page trying to deliver a series that they hope means as much to us as it does to them. Fun is the best word to use to try to describe The Midas Flesh.  Although it may seem like a copout word to use, it’s hard to describe The Midas Flesh without expressing  how much fun it is.