Mad Cave Studios 2020
Written by Stonie Williams
Illustrated by Jef Sadzinski
Coloured by Joana Lafuente
Lettered by Jusin Birch
Tilly, one of the newest super-powered people to join the Coalition of Heroes, is doing her best to navigate the dizzying world of superheroes. Working with her idols should be a dream come true, but when she learns the truth, Tilly's dream quickly becomes a nightmare. Now, Tilly has to make a choice - Get in line and stand with her heroes, or take a stand and risk becoming something more... Villainous.
I rather like this story. I was thinking perhaps it would be a build before getting into the swing of things. I mean that’s what I was expecting anyway. Instead it goes there wham bam thank you ma’am. We’re thrown right into the deeping with Tilly and we see everything from her point of view and to say that this places us at a distinct disadvantage I say that’s Rubbish. This is more fun for me as we alongside this young woman through no fault of her own finds herself and her life in such instant chaos. How she handles this and herself through what’s still to come is going to define who she is and what she’s capable of and I for one am as excited as can be to see what that’s going to be.
I found myself thoroughly enjoying the way that this is being told. The story & development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. Just the way the entirety of this book is structured and how the events unfold is how we get swept up in this as immediately as we do. The character development to me feels established to a degree. As if Stonie took them to a certain place and stopped so that they would develop further alongside the story and that too is really appealing to me. The pacing here is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the characters, their world and the twists & turns along the way. To see how all of this works together to create the story’s ebb & flow is really nicely done.
I have similar ideas done in other books at other companies but I have never experienced it like I am experiencing it here. I am all for this kind of fresh and new take on the genre and he’s hoping that the remainder of the story keeps this same kind of momentum up.
I like the interiors here a whole heck of a lot. The linework that we see is really nicely rendered and how the varying weights and in cases techniques are utilised to bring us this attention to detail that we see is utterly marvellous. The way that backgrounds are incorporated into panels and become an active part of the story and just backdrop is really rather great for me to see and feel. The depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book that they bring is in this case augmented. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a strong, talented eye for storytelling. The colour work that we see is also very nicely rendered. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is really impressive to see.
This is a great start to something that you may think is something but in reality is anything but. It is this kind of freshness and innovation with the industry that makes Mad Cave one of today’s more interesting publishing houses.