Blackbox Comics 2021
Written by Brian Hawkins
Illustrated by Raffaele Forte
Coloured by Carolina Pontes
Lettered by Justin Birch
Devlynn questions her sanity. A return trip home causes Devlynn to confront the tragedy of her past and the people she left behind. But the Devil is close and desperately wants what he's owed, her soul, and is willing to destroy all that Devlynn loves to get it.
I’m really digging the way that this is being told. Devlynn is an interesting young woman and that she’s using the demon inside her to wreck havoc on every other demon she can find has put her on her bosses hit list as priority number one. So how do you stop someone who has this nasty habit of being able to hide all the evidence and make Devlynn look like some kind of homicidal maniac? It is going to take everything she has learned and oh so much more more to figure all this out but I got news for you I cannot wait to find out it if and when it all goes down. What Brian is doing here is pretty frakkin extraordinary from a very simple presence and it just keeps building up more and more like water in the kettle forming steam.
I am loving the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development is pretty amazing and how we see the dialogue, the character interaction and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter continually change how we see them being fleshed out as people. Much like in real life mind you and that’s exciting to me. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way right up until that bombshell cliffhanger ending we’re kept on the edge of our seats waiting for what’s next.
I really like the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, strengthen and evolve creating this delicious amount of tension and awkward pauses that thoroughly engage the reader. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved exceedingly well.
The interiors here beautifully rendered. The linework is phenomenal and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level of quality detail work is extraordinarily brilliant. I do wish we’d see backgrounds really in play throughout to enhance the moments more. It’s the only thing I can find fault with is that there simply aren’t enough of them in use. The way we do see the depth perception, that sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is marvellous to see. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is masterfully rendered. How we light sources change the hues and tones or cast shadows is so well seen by the reader. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show a brilliant eye for colour and how to get the most out of it and how some colours when the light hits just right have a totally new hue in them is brilliantly done.
Sometimes the most fun, interesting, engaging and complex stories come from the small press publishing house that may not even be on your radar, case in point is this book from Blackbox Comics.