By d. emerson eddy — This week I wanted to continue to focus on important black voices within comics and specifically spotlight the work of C. Spike Trotman. Often times, you'll see a complete confusion within male and white dominated spaces on how to promote intersectionality, inclusivity, and diversity. In my opinion, often because they're looking at it from a perspective to maintain their power. Trotman, however, with her work and publishing company Iron Circus Comics, makes it look easy. Through hard work and dedication, she's managed to develop a sustainable and successful crowd-funded business model that helps serve a diverse range of creators that are often underserved and not represented within many other comics publishers.

Iron Circus Comics started out publishing Trotman's own Templar, Arizona collections, a webcomic about a unique town and the various subcultures within it, and grew from there publishing some things like Sophie Campbell's Shadoweyes and becoming well known for their brilliant anthologies like the sci-fi/fantasy focused New World and FTL, Y'all and the sex-positive, lady-friendly erotic comics of the Smut Peddler series. I think that there's definitely something for everyone in their catalogue. One of my favorites so far has been the Delver series from MK Reed, C. Spike Trotman, Clive Hawken, Maarta Laiho, and Ed Dukeshire.

Delver is a fantasy tale that takes an approach that unlike many other stories that I've read. It approaches the world first from the perspective of the Aster family as their world is essentially turned upside down. The first issue starts as a door to a dungeon pops up in their cold storage on their farm, opening up their small town of Oddgoat to a strange new world. I love the concept itself of using this kind of roleplaying game element as the catalyst for change within the world. Reed and Trotman very nicely use it to delve deeper into the ideas of how something like increased trade, adventurers coming around to use the door, and the magic seeping into the land and corrupting it. It's a pretty brilliant exploration of how wealth can change a town and the people in it. Plus awesome monsters and weird magic. It gets even more interesting as a protagonist forms in Temerity Aster and she starts to question her place at home.

The art from Hawken and Laiho is wonderful. Hawken has an open, simple style that reminds me a bit of Ken Garing and Claudia Balboni, very impressive with the facial expressions and getting more detailed and weird when it comes to showcasing the oddity of how magic is affecting the world. The talking, distorted baby goat in particular is something disturbing that you'll want to check out. Laiho tends to use earth tones in her color palette here, which makes the blues and greens of magic pop even more when they're present. Dukeshire's lettering throughout is quite nice, getting the opportunity to shine a few times with some great sound effects.

Delver #1 itself may not be available individually any more, but I can highly recommend it as the first chapter in Delver: Season One. Reed, Trotman, Hawken, Laiho, and Dukeshire deliver a highly entertaining fantasy adventure that builds on a common video game and tabletop roleplaying game convention, while also delivering some thought-provoking social commentary through engaging characters and incredible art. I'm definitely looking forward to the Season Two.

Delver Season One

Delver #1
Writers: MK Reed & C. Spike Trotman
Artist: Clive Hawken
Colorist: Maarta Laiho
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Publisher: Iron Circus Comics
Release Date: February 20, 2019
Price: $6.99 as part of Delver: Season One

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d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.