>>77257248I actually just realized it was the same artist. Looking back, I can recognize it now, which is kind of mind blowing for me. Her art for Guilded Age is actually pretty good. It's kind of surprising given how incredibly stupid Squirrel Girl looks. I actually liked it when I was reading it years ago. It had a distinctive look to it in Guilded Age, but without the kind hilariously outplace expressions of Squirrel Girl. A little simple, same as now really, but nothing heinous. Don't really know what happened.
In any case, there was an artist change, so she's not on it any more. It's John Waltrip now who is, quite simply, a better draftsman than Erica was, as much as I liked her art for the comic.
The comic is very interesting. Largely a good spin on a lot of classic fantasy touchstones. Some humor, some action, conspiracies and political intrigue. However, there's a pretty big reveal part of the way through that turns the entire story on its head for awhile.
It turns out the main characters are all, mostly, people stuck inside some experiment Matrix-esque control system for a World of Warcraft pastiche. At first it seems like it's just a game, but then it's revealed the game is somehow using crazy tech magic to tap into a real fantasy world to use for its game, one among many. There's now a running subplot of people in "our world" trying to figure out what crazy shit the game company CEO is up to. It's still very good when it's just about the plot of the heroes trying to deal with a war caused by their own side's imperialism, but it can be a bit much to ask readers to accept that spoiler into a story that never really needed it and still hasn't really justified itself narrative-wise.
