Lakota: Serpents of Aztlan

by Mark Ellis

Kindle Edition

Published December 19, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Trike · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I was reading this story I kept thinking this felt like a book report rather than an actual tale. Turns out that was pretty much what it is: Mark Ellis is an Irish author who has a fascination with American Indians. For some reason folks in the various British Isles have a hankerin’ for cowboys and the Wild West, probably stemming from the time Buffalo Bill Cody first brought his western show to the UK way back in 1887. It remains one of the biggest theatrical hits of all time in England, and I believe still in the top 10 in Europe. This is why Bram Stoker put a cowboy in Dracula in 1897: his patron was mad for the American West.

So the story is only like 40 pages, and it’s pretty much just a bunch of factoids strung together in an adventure tale. There’s not much to it other than it’s a cross between Indiana Jones and Breaking Bad, with the titular character of Lakota being a sort of Doc Savage type. It would’ve been much better if not everything were explained the instant it showed up, and a couple things not explained at all.

The rest of the book contains some short reprints from the 1960s (maybe), plus a bunch of real history tidbits. I found those more interesting than the story, honestly. The art has a sort of indie/amateur look to it, which is fine, but the idea behind the character is interesting enough that I’d love to see a better treatment of it, say like Wolverine: Old Man Logan or recent run on Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Volume One, where not everything is an infodump and the adventure takes priority.

[Chad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, just not at all good. This is only about a 30 page comic with the rest just being filler from looks like some very old comics. It's about a Native American hero who fights a bad guy from a rejected episode of Breaking Bad. It's nonstop infodumps and OK art. The writer lives in Ireland and always wanted to write about Native Americans and it shows in how he writes this.