Customer Reviews

Sheba - Volume One: The Sands of Seth

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This is one of the finest collections of comics I've comeacross in a very long time. The drawing, the writing, the humor, thepathos, everything comes together in ways few things ever cometogether...This is the real stuff, folks...

This is an amazing romp through history and the afterlife. Walter S. Crane has done nothing short of a brilliant job of writing the story of the titular mummy cat Sheba, as she seeks the Feather of Truth so that she can have her heart weighed and earn her right to eternal life with the gods.

The only problem is that Seth has other plans, and wants to retake Egypt from the followers of the fledgling upstart religion Islam by starting an "interfaith incident". What follows is an epic journey through the afterlife, fighting Seth's machinations with the assistance of Anubis (the god of the Egyptian Underworld), dealing with the gods of the Hindu pantheon in India and much more. Even Burag, a beast of Islamic lore makes a special guest appearance to transport our heroes to India.

Crane weaves such a rich, epic scale tapestry with the storytelling, along with the experimental, yet gorgeously rendered artwork that aids in explaining to the reader what is going on with subtle as well as gross details. It succeeds on entertaining and educating both those who may be very familiar with religion and history, and those who may only have a passing knowledge of such things.

But most importantly, the characters are absolutely wonderful, even the so-called villains, like Seth. Each one has a distinct personality, and Sheba herself is delightful and expressive as well as a simple palace cat who gets caught up in a grand afterlife battle. Anubis in this story is great fun, too. Coming across as something of the divine equivalent of a grumpy slacker. But more interesting is that he is this way because his time is slowly ending among mortals along with the other old gods as the Abrahamic religion pushes them to obscurity. Until Sheba came along, all he could do was bemoan his fate in Limbo's bar with everyone else.

One thing. This book is not for little kids. Although the artwork depicting characters is toony, the story itself is rather mature, with some fairly scary scenes, and others with very adult (abeit tastefully done) sexual situations. So please be careful. Other than that, enjoy this book.