Review – The Discipline 1-6

Review – The Discipline 1-6

Review – The Discipline 1-6

Warning: This article contains themes and content meant for mature audiences! BGCP takes care not to expose younger viewers to extreme images, language and content!! Any users abusing this could be banned or blocked from the site. Please click back if you do not want to continue this review of The Discipline!

Writer: Peter Milligan

Artist: Leandro Fernandez

Publisher: Image Comics

Published: October 2016

Introduction

BGCP’s review of superhot comic duo MILLIGAN and FERNÁNDEZ’s controversial collected TPB of sex and metamorphosis. When a frustrated Manhattan wife, Melissa Peake, allows herself to be seduced by a mysterious stranger, she is drawn into an ancient war between The Discipline and the creatures known as The Stalkers… and must discover the hitherto unimagined potential within herself to survive. But what is the cost? Whatever you’ve heard about it, won’t prepare you for…THE DISCIPLINE. Collects Image Comics THE DISCIPLINE #1-6.

Story and Writing

Mellisa Drake is bored but her dreams are an erotic and forbidden fantasy! Milligan starts the story at 11 to build tension and like the protagonist spends most of the book teasing the audience with glimpses and flashes of what is to come. The world of the The Discipline and The Stalkers two ancient enemies caught in an eternal battle with sex, violence and seduction at it’s core.

The collected six issues follow Mellissa’s descent into a world where pain and pleasure lead to transformation and satisfaction. This imagery of slaughtered cattle is shown and repeated several times to show how the Discipline actual treat their disciples. As a reader, you are frustrated, excited and titillated with the mature scenes. Intercourse is used as an act of transmogrification, where flesh is changed and pain intensifies pleasure.

If you are used to the Beano, Bunty or My Little Pony this is not for you!! Any fans of Barker’s The Hell-bound Heart will delight in this series and if your auntie has finished reading the Fifty Shades series then this will make a delightful Christmas present!

When interviewed by Image Comics Milligan said:

“In a story like this, where a character is going to be dragged into some weird and dark places, it’s important that we have a solid grounding in reality, that we see the place where she starts from so we can appreciate the weirdness and difference of the world she begins to occupy.“

Image comics: March 2016 (all rights reserved)

Artwork

Fernandez co-created THE DISCIPLINE with Peter Milligan and it shows! He’s invested in every page and image and the mature themes are extreme but not pornographic. Erotic images are not shown to denigrate and both men and women are equally shown ensuring that this not at either expense. He’s done books like Wolverine: Coyote Crossing with Greg Rucka and Northlanders: The Plague Widow with Brian Wood. He’s drawn complete books from Garth Ennis’s Punisher MAX run and many other popular characters like Deadpool, Avengers, New Mutants, and Hulk. 

His style is beautiful, ugly, raw and exciting and you’ll find you self going back a page to make sure that you’ve got everything from his pages. The colour palette is deliberately pale with muted tones highlighting the intense subject matter. The splashes or blood and flesh jump out the panel and the page at the reader.

He’s also not fallen into the trap of buxom beauties with death-defying breasts and Marie Antionette waists. Woman are real, poses are normal and for those excited by sexual imagery the books will increase your heartrate!

Interview with Fernandez

Speaking the Image Comics in March 2016 Fernandez explains his style and how the cover art was developed:

Image Comics: Your attention to both fashion and acting is front and centre in THE DISCIPLINE. On top of that, sometimes you drape someone’s face or profile in shadow, obscuring their emotions. How do you decide when to put something on full display and when to pull back?

LEANDRO FERNANDEZ: Well…contradictory to what you say, I think silhouettes are very moving. It’s true, the faces are obscured, and we don’t have a clear view of their emotions, their expressions. But this moves the storytelling into the right context: when we follow the story, we might understand what or how the character feels, and the silhouette might suggest it without necessarily showing it.

My point is, when we “complete” what we don’t clearly see with our imagination, we will see it anyway, with an even bigger strength. It’s a resource I like to use in storytelling, making the reader complete what isn’t shown completely. Sometimes it’s better to hide than to show. On the other side, I find the silhouettes very strong. I use them many times and I think they are very powerful, and above all very emotional.

Image Comics: The cover design for THE DISCIPLINE is cool, with one dominant colour and a black background giving the covers a cohesive feel. How do you approach creating covers? Do you prefer them to depict specific scenes from the comic, or something more moody and general?

LEANDRO FERNANDEZ: I used to plan the covers to tell something we will find inside the book. When I was only a reader, I liked that fact, because I had a glimpse of what the book had inside. But after the years I have spent working on this, and the natural evolution of comics and entertainment, the way images work have changed in that way. The audience expects something different from that side.

It’s natural we will see images that tell us something about the story, give us some concept of it, but not a finished piece, an exact moment of the story. It can be a comic, or even a movie poster or a tv series promotional shot. The challenge for these new images we are creating is to tell the general idea of what the book is about. It’s interesting, I find it like a different side of the storytelling.

Image Comics: March 2016 (all rights reserved)

Overall thoughts

So final warning this is mature and is not for everyone’s taste or reading. For older readers who enjoy strong content with sexual imagery and BDSM themes, this is a fresh and intriguing take on the classic initiate that explores their likes and desires with a dangerous stranger genre!

I cautiously recommend this to our stronger stomached followers. If your previous reads include Barker, King or Koontz you’ll love The Discipline. Don’t forget to leave a comment or rating or our Review of The Discipline

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