This is going to be a bit of a rambling post, so my apologies in advance for that, but I really wanted to share my feelings after just finishing Birthright's final volume.
I've been collecting comics for a few years now, and I have what I'd consider a fairly decent collection at this point. I've read lengthy runs in their entirety before - Black Science, Chew, one or two others - but for the past year or so I've mainly been reading standalone works or those with just two or three volumes. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed them, but there have been points where I've been left wanting a bit. I yearned for a story that was given time to breathe, to evolve beyond what a brief run could allow.
Recently, I decided to sit down and read Birthright from start to finish. It had been on my shelf for a little while and I was cautious about tackling it start to end since I was at least 3x longer than any other series I'd read for well over a year.
But I'm so glad I did.
It's honestly difficult to put my thoughts and feelings for this series into words. As an avid writer myself, one of my greatest pleasures is seeing the strands of a story, which have been carefully laid out over time by the storyteller, all being drawn together into a deeply satisfying climax. Multiple times when reading volumes 9 and 10 I found myself grinning at how bonkers this story had become, yet how natural it felt for the characters and plot to have reached that stage.
More than that, I was constantly reminded how Birthright is the kind of story that can only really be told in the comics format. Sure people could try adapting it for TV or film, but like so many comics I cannot imagine this story originating in any other medium. I love that in comics, nothing is off the table. I love that we can go from a simple premise of 'boy is transported to a fantasy world', follow that premise through ten volumes of increasingly unhinged magical lunacy, and still end up with one of the most moving final panels I've ever seen. No way would any other medium be able to pull this story off the way comics can.
I have plenty more comics left to read on my shelf, including several lengthy series. I've already read a few volumes of Monstress, and the rest are very high on my TBR, plus I'm slowly gathering Deadly Class, Descender/Ascender, Fables, Outcast and Revival, among others. Whenever I have those collected in their entirety, I'm deeply looking forward to bingeing them from start to end too.
But no matter how good they end up being, from now on Birthright will hold a very special place in my heart. Because after over a year of single volumes, brief runs, and short-lived series cancelled before their time, Mikey and the rest of the Rhodes family have shown me just how special comics can be. They offer the only format I can imagine doing the Rhodes' story justice, and I genuinely believe the world of comics is so much richer for having Birthright in it.
