White Trees #1: A Series of Welcome Surprises

This isn’t Your Fathers Dads on a mission story.

Written by Chip Sdarsky

Illustrated by Kris Anka

Colored by MAtt Wilson

Lettered by Aditya Bidikar

Proofreading by Allison O’Toole

Production Artist Shanna Matuszak





The White Trees: A Black Sand Tale, an oversized two issue miniseries, snuck up on me. I remember it being announced and being immediately sold by the creative team of writer Chip Zdarsky, illustrator Kris Anka, colorist Matt Wilson with lettering by Aditya Bidikar. Judging by the cover it was clearly a fantasy series, not sure if I read the solicit. All of that was months ago, sure seeing Kris Anka post the occasional art piece to Instagram kept in the back of my mind, but all of a sudden it’s out this week and a real surprise. White Trees is a queer fantasy adventure about three former warriors, legends, and friends and those job histories have changed them on a quest they never expected with enough emotional baggage to fill even more oversized issues.

The lead of our cover characters is Sir Krylos the Bold, the skunk bearded one on the left. He is the one we meet on the first page and the one whose interiority is explored. For all the high fantasy aesthetics, beautifully realized with Matt Wilson’s coloring, White Trees moves like a revisionist western as it questions the efficacy of the actions from years and wars past. Krylos isn’t William Munny, but he feels apiece with John Wayne as Jacob McCandles from Big Jake as both appear to be terrible fathers with strict ideas of what is what. Throughout the journey Krylos recollects on what he’s looking for and what becomes apparent is that he never did, or no longer does, appreciate art or material objects that do not serve the task at hand; and how that materialistic pragmatism interfered with relationships. These memories are just one more thing to haunt the warrior turned farmer. White Trees #1 features three flashbacks, but that pragmatism comes through on the first page. While tending his farm Krylos picks a beautiful blue flower. He doesn’t smell it, he just looks at it before casually tossing it aside and gets back to work. Only to be interrupted by the King’s envoy.

With his beard and stoic demeanor Krylos does not have the most emotive character design. However, Kris Anka gets every ounce of expressive potential out of that mans brow and when combined with the piercing black and blue eyes from Wilson creates a haunted gaze.

Krylos isn’t the only one that has been summoned. His former comrades in arms Sir Dahvlan the Swift (the catman) and Sir Scotiar of Blacksand(the elf) also appear with immediate tension. The King informs Krylos and company that their children, Chal-Kra and Windlo, have been kidnapped by the neighboring Trilonians. Anka gives the revelation of Chal-Kra and Windlo’s relationships a Romeo & Juliet vibe with how they draw the shock and disgust on Dahvlan’s face. Their mission should the choose to except it, is enter Trilonia rescue their children, get out, and don’t start a war in the process. This is the story of a bunch of dads going to rescue the kids they don’t really know and maybe repairing old relationships along the way.

While Krylos is quite and stoic, things are more emotive and openly dysfunctional between husbands Dahvlan and Scotiar. As the latter struggles with his role as step-father and changing the way he speaks about their daughter.

As they travel emotional wounds about what they did and didn’t do during the previous war begin to reopen and forms the core interpersonal drama between them. Zdarsky and Anka let these old wounds hang over everything, allowing Dahvlan to throw plenty of petty barbs at Krylos. Despite being a first issue, Zdarsky doesn’t bother with really explaining the world, readers get a map and that is it for paratext, throwing the readers into a world everyone but them understands. This lack of information when mixed with Anka and Wilson’s art and some moments of special emphasis from Bidikar the creative team create the impression of fully formed characters from archetypes. This trio have the weight of history to them and I want to know more, but that isn’t important to the story being told.

With this weight and the emotional scarring they bring with them it conjures images of cyclical, if not constant, violence. How that violence has transformed how they act and taught them to always be fighting even if they lack arms. As Milola, Dahvlan’s ex-wife, puts it their way is like a “bloody hammer – even if you think it won’t be.” A red cloud of violence hangs over them, it becomes the panel color for Krylos’ flashbacks, but there maybe some hope for these men of violence. Consider how Krylos ultimately deals with the dragon and for all the talk of violence that propels the plot, there isn’t much of it on the page.

One of the several surprises in this book for me is how much I like Dahvlan. When I first saw him on the cover I thought he looked like a solid fantasy design. As I read on though the character started reminding me of myself. I’m not a cranky cat person like he is, but he is a tall bisexual with a bit of a gut and I’m a tall bisexual with a bit of a gut. He kinda looks like me. When I first got into (mainstream) comics there was a dearth of major male bi characters. It was like you had John Constantine – a character whose sexuality was more trivia note than explicit until recently and one I never much vibed to barring Matt Ryan on Legends of Tomorrow and the TynionIV-Doyle-Rossmo run. You find more over time, eventually I found Catman and the queer friendly Secret Six. The Gillen-McKelvie Young Avengers felt like a revelation and David “Prdigy” Alleyne’s coming out sequence is still one of the better explanations I have for my sexuality in media. But they didn’t really look like me and Dahvlan does and that is nice.

Eventually the trio make it to the forest with titular White Trees, another place scarred by war. It is said the forest was once filled with magnificent colors but after the Battle of Rosefield the trees turned white in shock at the brutality. It is in this cursed and enchanted land that White Trees goes to a place I never expected. After they make camp the fae begin to show up. And by “show up” I mean with the turn of a page the readers and Scotiar are greeted by a hunky erect, nude, devilish looking fae posed like a romanced Iron Bull. That was quite the surprise. Things quickly turn into a seductive and explicit orgy, While mostly everyone gets involved, Scotiar gets the emphasis as the devilish fae tugs and temps him with a life free of monogamy and parental roles. This would be the second explicit gay sex scene Kris Anka has done by my count, the other being ‘Summer Lovin’ with Jen Bartel and Wilson in the WicDiv Christmas Annual. You don’t really see that in mainstream comics. I’m still surprised when they let to men kiss in a big two book much less actually get physical with full frontal nudity. (The closest Big Two example would probably be the first issue of Orlando-Blanco Midnighter & Apollo and even that was PG-13 with selective paneling.) The orgy is meant to trap our trio but what Anka does with Dahvlan and how he draws the emotion on his face, you get why he might want to stay. Anka fills the panels in this 5 page sequence with all sorts of body types having a good time, something else you don’t really see in media in general.

The sudden eroticism was a welcome surprise, but it also helps to pay off Scotiar’s arc in the issue, as he is the one who breaks the spell. He turns away and accepts his role as stepparent and all the responsibilities that entails. We don’t actually get much of Scotiar and Dahvlan’s relationship outside of the mission, but with the character acting between the two, the little looks they give one another early on, earn that sense of history and commitment between the two. The reaction Dahvlan has to this turn is beautiful.

White Trees covers a lot of ground and throws readers for a loop in spots. The second issues is due out next month, but it appears Zdarsky has dodged the Part 1 of 2 curse with an issue that doesn’t end on a cliffhanger or require something else for emotional catharsis. If anything the ending is fittingly understated, moody, and ominous. The plot is simple but how it exposes the emotionally scarred nature of these characters is excellent. It did what you hope a first anything does: sell the characters. The creative team tease a fantasy world without getting sidetracked into meaningless world building and has me ready to say “Thank you sirs may I have another.”