Infinitum An afrofuturistic tale

Fielder (Matty's Rocket) digs deep into his pulp toolbox to fuse genre influences in this daring epic, which bristles with action and verve. African warrior regent Aja Oba commands a cavalry of giant canines to subdue rival kingdoms while amassing great wealth. But Oba and his queen are unable to bear children, and so he steals the newborn son of his concubine, who retaliates by cursing him to immortality. He sees his queen, son, and kingdom wither over time, and enters a never-ending loop of conflict, conquest, love, loss, and rejection as he wanders the continent for centuries. When he's brought to the New World as a slave, he goes on to become an American folk legend, acting in modern history at key moments. As the narrative rockets forward from fable to space fantasy, Fielder stumbles in a final arc of interplanetary colonization, warring aliens, and Armageddon that lacks the depth of his earlier visions. The single-panel splash renderings writhe with giant beasts, battlefield landscapes, and close-up intimate moments and tortured emotional expressions. Aja's hulking musculature is drawn just right, and Fielder portrays him as strong, cunning, and deeply flawed. This sweeping tale mirrors both the history of genre literature and the African American experience. (Jan.)

In ancient times, a ferocious African warlord named Aja Oba betrays his concubine, who avenges herself by cursing him with eternal life. Following the death of his family and his kingdom's downfall, Oba joins Carthage in their battle against the Roman empire. Centuries later, he's captured by slavers and delivered to the New World. After enduring years of racism and inequality, as well as watching one lover after the next grow old and die, Oba devotes himself to violence, fighting in the Civil War, both world wars, and Vietnam. More centuries pass, and Oba reinvents himself as the head of a massive tech empire, which eventually leads him to establish a colony on a distant planet where he hopes to spend the rest of his endless life in peace. Unfortunately, an intergalactic war between Earth and an alien race forces Oba to endure several hundreds of years of planet-shattering combat. Postwar, renowned as a Godlike hero, Oba transcends his need for a physical form--although his journey ultimately continues until the end of the universe. VERDICT Fielder's (The Day Chronicles: The Secret Life of Mary Day) boldly painted illustrations exhibit raw power on every page of this staggeringly ambitious epic.