Customer Reviews

Thieves & Kings Volume One, The Red Book

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4 star:		(1)
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Hi. I'm Mark Oakley, and I both wrote and illustrated this book, as well as volumes two, three and four also listed here. (There is a fifth book on its way for 2004!)

Amazon incorrectly lists these books as being, 'Out of Print.' They are not.

I just don't sell to Amazon anymore due to the poor economics of the affair. After they take their 50% retailer's cut, and after I pay for shipping the books to Amazon, my publishing company winds up either barely breaking even, or more often than not, actually losing money on each sale. If Amazon were to order in proper quantity, say 30 at a time, and thereby justify their retailer's volume discount, then it would all work nicely because shipping in volume is much less expensive than sending copies one at a time as sales click through! Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't work this way. During the three years I was selling through Amazon, a lot of T&K books were purchases by Amazon customers. I figured, "Oh, well it's only a handful of sales every week or two. It's worth it for the advertising value." Well, after a while, those sales added up to hundreds of dollars worth, and I got tired of watching Amazon profit from my work while I ran in circles.

Small press is a wonderful thing, but unfortunately, in my case it doesn't work well with the Amazon business model.

So if you want to purchase copies of this or any of the Thieves & Kings books, please swing by my company website at. . .

www.iboxpublishing.com

The books are popular and they are ALWAYS in print.

Cheers!

The fantasy genre is experiencing a rebirth in the comics medium with titles like Bone, Castle Waiting, Akiko...and Thieves & Kings, my personal favorite.

The basic premise that launches the story: a young thief named Rubel befriends a princess and is drawn into a world of magic, mystery, and adventure. Don't let the cliched premise fool you for a minute - read a few pages into the story and you'll find Thieves & Kings to be one of the most novel, imaginative fantasy stories you've encountered.

To begin with, note the innovative format. Thieves & Kings combines traditional comic book panel-to-panel storytelling with pages of illustrated prose. It's a pretty cool combination, with the prose providing exposition and focus on the characters' inner thoughts, and the traditional comic book pages focusing on action, character interaction, and comic moments that require careful timing.

The characters are the real draw for me. This may be high adventure, but these characters are intimately human - no stock fantasy-types here. Rubel, the central character, thinks and talks like a kid. A real kid. One of the early highlights of the series is his extended argument with his companion imp, Varkias, over a completely trivial matter. You'll find yourself laughing often, remembering what it was like to argue when you were too young to make a clear point. And you'll remember what it was like to feel sorrow as a kid, as Rubel tries to make his way in the mysterious and occasionally dark world he lives in.

The fantasy world Mr. Oakley has created is just as innovative as the characters. It feels real - there's city life and commerce and politics going on in the background - but there are also imps, shadow ladies, and sentient woods. Of great note is the fact that all the elements of the fantastic are described with such care as to make them entirely plausible without stripping them of their magic and mystery (a dangerous pitfall for many a careless fantasy writer!). It's rare that a fantasy world can be imbued with such a high degree of verisimilitude, but there it is, right before your eyes.

My criticisms are minor. Some of the action scenes in this first collection are slightly difficult to follow (remedied in follow-up collections). And...well, that's about it. Mr. Oakley isn't the most polished artist in the world, but I don't consider that a negative point. He may not be slick, but you WILL believe in the world he draws and the characters that live in it. I guarantee it.

To sum: Thieves & Kings is a novel fantasy/adventure with a strong character focus and keen human insight. It's got terrific action, all kinds of comedy, and many a charming moment. Sometimes it swells with exuberance and joy, sometimes it's sad and bittersweet. It is, without a doubt, the best fantasy you'll read for a long time.

I picked up the first few issues of this series shortly after it came out. I was a big fan of the fantasy genre in all forms and I was looking for a decent comic along those lines after the demise of the excellent Starchild series by James Owen. Well, I saw the cover and picked it up and immediately after reading one issue I was hooked. This is the story of Rubel, a boy thief returning home after a stint at sea. He returns to find his former friends gone and he is left with basically nothing and no one. He soon becomes involved with a princess, a mysterious witch and an imp named Varkias. The plot spirals on from there, drawing on Arthurian myth, Lewis Carrol and many others. The characters are great and the art is just amazing. M'Oak's backgrounds are lavish in detail and had me staring. I also liked how he inserted sections of prose to flesh out the story. Great comic, not to be missed.

I had just recently heard about this series from a link, the art immeadiatly caught my eye as being fantastic. After ogling over the web page for a while, I finally picked up a copy, and let me tell all of you out there, this is the finest american comic book out there (aside from anything by Phil Foglio). The story is fun and enjoyable, the shifting between novel and comic is very original and interesting, and the art... the art is the best art I've seen in a comic (okay, so that's a tad bit of an exageration) but it great nontheless. I reccomend this book to anyone and everyone, this should be required reading! Boy oh boy, this series suddenly just jumped me and I don't regret a thing.

An amazing story about thouroughly interesting characters. It becomes obvious immediatly that M'oak's claim that he has been building this world & it's history mentaly for years must be true. This is a story from a mind that has very few creative limitations. No man could live long enough to tell the tale that I believe dwells in Mark Oakley (M'oak)'s mind. Regardless, I still wish that I could be here to hear it all. The artwork fits the tale perfectly, which is a rare thing. Not since "The Adventures Of Captain Jack," by MIKE KAZALEH went out of print have I read such an entertaining book. Not since Gaiman's "Sandman" have I read one so thought-provoking. Truly worthy of the term "Graphic Storytelling."

Oakley takes a unique approach to comic book-ing: He tells much of the story through sparsely illustrated pages of prose -- allowing him to show-off his skills as a word-smith and his control of character depth, motivation and development. But don't think *T&K* is lacking in action. On the contrary: Oakley's background in animation comes forwrd here, superbly! His action sequences are ploted and exicuted like a cross between *The Mask of Zoro* and Jackie Chan. There's not a simple, straight-forward sword fight to be found.

For ages 8-old and from the fantasy genre comes the story of a young theif and orphan Rubel. He comes back from a journey at sea and his town is completely different. Just four years away from home can change alot, as he soon finds out. Young Rubel is forced to come to terms with the loss of the people he liked best: Quinton the wizard, his late grandfather, the princess Katara, his dog, and old friends from his secret society.
It's a fantastic read and even better there's four sequels!It's an engaging for young and old readers alike.

Thieves & Kings is an odd duck -- part illustrated narrative, part graphic novel -- but it's a charming odd duck as Mark Oakley's ambitious fantasy tale mirrors the energy and exuberance of his lead character, the young thief Rubel, and smartly focuses on him and his adventures as opposed to the more typical genre emphasis on world-building. It's not that Oakley doesn't offer a compelling setting in Oceansend, because he does and it is, but the appeal of his story -- which has all of the standard genre tropes accounted for -- lies squarely on Rubel's precocious shoulders.

The combination of illustrated narrative and traditional comic book format feels a bit awkward at first, but as the story moves along, it mostly works, with the comic book sections offering Oakley the opportunity to mix in some show with his tell. His brisk writing style is complemented (if not always enhanced) by his solid artwork, which suffers at times from overly crowded panels and odd layouts.

Nevertheless, this first volume is an engaging introduction to Rubel and Oceansend that kept me turning the pages and, when it was done, I was anxious to immediately jump into the next volume.

Mark Oakley's Thieves & Kings is one of the best, freshest, original fantasy stories to come along in a long long time. Part graphic novel and part illustrated narrative; Oakley has created an incredible world/mythology that is enjoyable, creative, innovative and almost revolutionary - all without demanding the reader to stretch their beliefs and imagination to uncomfortable or awkward limits. It is truly an enjoyable epic-feeling story with wonderful characters.
This is not a story that tries to imitate Tolkien, or that is derived from trite fantasy genres like D&D. Though some of the words/concepts may seem familiar, their importance and function are not what you would find in the standard tripe that litters the fiction landscape. For example: one of the main characters, the Thief, is not a thief. He is a creature of magic (though very real), a person of honor, loyalty, integrity, and innocence. And perhaps it would be more accurate to think of him as THE Thief. He really is too complicated to explain here, but he is a wonderful character.
Anyway, I can't recommend this story enough to you. BUY IT! YOU'LL LIKE IT! Mark Oakley has stepped outside of clichéd stereotypes, and tired old story telling tools, to tell a tale in a wonderful new world, using an exciting new mythology that is at once fresh & surprising and comfortable & easy to believe. He has crafted characters that are interesting and endearing, without being saccharin and sappy. The story is epic and nuanced, personable with the characters and grandiosely spanning ages. It's really REALLY GREAT! Are you still reading this?! Haven't you bought it yet?!
Good lord! Buy it! If you don't like it, I'll buy it from you and give to one of my friends as a gift! If you're scared, just buy the 1st book. That's all it will take to get you hooked. If you're smart, you'll buy the first 2 or 3 books; that way when you finish the first book, and you realize that you need to buy all of them, you'll get to read a book or 2 more while you're waiting for the rest of them to arrive in the mail. See? It would pay to plan ahead. If you don't want to believe me, go and sell yourself on it by visiting his website and reading a little of it, peruse his art work, read other reviews!
Go to Mark Oakley's Thieves & Kings website! Look at more of his stuff there! Buy from him! STOP WASTING TIME READING THIS AND BUY THESE BOOKS!
No, I don't know Mark Oakley. I have never met him. I gain nothing from you buying his products, or anything else from IBox Publishing. So, that's all I have to say about that.
Thank you.

This is the first collection of a b&w comic that is simply excellent. An epic fantasy that lacks a sense of pretentiousness towards the topic. A marvelous story, told well. The art is similar in some ways to Miyazaki (Nausicaa) -- simple, manga faces that express volumes. The backgrounds of the city and surrounding areas are incredibly done, both in detail and design.