Vault Comics 2018
Written by Vita Ayala
Illustrated by Lisa Sterle
Coloured by Stelladia
Lettered by Rachel Deering
Having overcome raging fires and terrifying monsters in search of her lost brother Angel, Ellie Puente has reached the center of the labyrinth. There she will wind through a maze of forsaken subway cars, as her most painful memories emerge from the ever-rising water. If she can wade through the flood, she'll face the most frightening challenge yet...the truth.
What Vita is able to achieve through the characterisation here is spectacular. Ellie is a very complex and damaged young woman and she has a very harsh view of herself and hasn’t come to except her own strength’s only her weaknesses. While self-discovery isn’t usually this complicated that her mind finds it necessary to do this to her so she can find that which makes her strong well it’s pretty damn amazing.
I like the way that this is structured. All of the cars that Ellie runs through or looks into are scenes from her past that she felt defined who she is. Those moments where embarrassment and anger are seen and how its her family that is the root cause she has forgotten all the good, the love and the joy that go alongside the anger and frustration. So how can she find that again? Honestly I do not think that I was prepared for this to be so deep and so utterly fascinating on a cerebral level. Once you get into the story, which happens by the way in the first issue, there is a sense of compulsion to keep going because aside from the premise what these women bring to us here is phenomenal.
I cannot rave enough about how well this is done. I love the fact that Ellie is a lesbian but that’s not used as the focal point, it doesn’t need to be hammered home every five minutes. Yes it’s a part of who she is and one that coming from the type of family she does was and is hard to admit to everyone. So it plays a factor in the story but no one harps and it’s a part of her journey as much as her relationship with her parents and her brother. For me this is how I want to see the inclusion of LGBTQ characters because it’s honest but not in your face.
I like the work that Lisa and Stelladia do on the interiors here. The way the colours are used so that the hues on the pages are what they are and somewhat alter the way we see the clothing as well is extremely well done. Lisa manages to keep a consistency to the work here that I am so impressed with as that head wound is where it should be throughout the book. The linework is pretty darn nice as well and I like seeing it used on the train cars and the backgrounds. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off a wonderful eye for storytelling.
Very rarely will you come across a story that feels so utterly and completely as personal as this one does and even rarer will you find that you connect to it just as emotionally. In our ever changing world where right now Hate seems to rule it is a superb reminder of how love is needed in ones life. A positive story in such a dark manner isn’t what you would come to expect here but it’s what we got and it is one of the most heartwarming and wonderful of ways you couldn’t imagine.