Image Comics 2017
Written & Coloured Jordie Bellaire
Illustrated by Vanesa R. Del Ray
Lettered & Production by Clayton Cowles
Alright so this was an interesting first issue. We kind of start at a middle, beginning and ending depending on your point of view. So where this is going to go next is completely up in the air. Part of me wants to see how things got to this point, that moment when the small town backwards country folk figured out that there Witches in town and decided to do something about it. Then there’s a part of me that wants to see how the town progresses from this point onward. There’s potential here to have a town like Midnight Texas and that’s kind of cool.
There’s a definite different approach to the way this story is being told. I mean that we come into it feeling like the story is established and still not feeling cheated is extremely hard to do. So while the story is great and the fact that for majority of the issue we don’t see “those bitches” and instead just what they are capable of raises the tension quota and heightens the horror factor. Sometimes it can be hard to give folks something so outside the norm but for me it’s a good thing, more so when executed so well. This gives readers a chance for something new and different and yet still comfortably familiar.
Then there’s another wow factor here in Vanesa and what she does with the interior artwork. Jordie’s colouring has always been superb and the pop of light and colour as the shading source here is amazingly well done. But it’s the life Vanesa brings to these characters that really steals the show. The way page layouts are utilised through their angles, perspective and use of backgrounds make reading this so gosh darn interesting.
I kind of like that this town has that good ole boy club feel about how it’s been run up until now. How through the description of the Witch why they chose this town is essential to how it's been run through all these years. While a tad on the cliche side it still represents some very real places in the United States that you don’t want to pass through for fear of breaking down, the car that is.
To see it as not just a place but as an essential character as well that’s just another notch in the bedpost. I love that the place is much a part of the story as the characters who live there. The sheer amount of characterisation and set-up into this issue so that we as readers have this innate understanding for whatever comes next was done exceedingly well. So far I want to know more about a myriad of characters we meet in this issue not to mention those who are not destined to survive this experience.
These aren’t cute witches or caricatures of what we’ve come to see in popular culture no these are the kind that will use the forces of darkness at their disposal to get what they want. They will kill you if you stand in their way, insult them or just get on their bad side and it’s this representation of the old school powerful witch that we’ve been missing for too long until now. These are the Charmed ones, nope these ladies, using the term loosely, are the kind that scared the Brother’s Grimm.