After this I'll be all caught up on my book reviews, thus far, for 2017. We're already into April, and while I'm only on my fourth novel of the year I've read a lot of comic book volumes, I've found some I like and some... not so much. I still have a number of comic series and graphic novels to get through, but I'm taking it slow, enjoying the artwork and enjoying the stories.
The last comic series I read was Pretty Deadly, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and illustrated by Emma Ríos for Image Comics. I decided to lump these two reviews together, because for the most part, my feelings were pretty similar for both... I had a hard time getting into these comics. The first volume is a supernatural western where reapers and death ride across the western plains and battle it out for control of death, while the second takes the same reapers to World War II where they have to put a stop of the Reaper of War from consuming too many souls. And both of those ideas sound awesome! I love the supernatural element to the stories, the melancholic characters and heavy mood and atmosphere that DeConnick writes. The stories are sort of narrated by a (skeleton) bunny and a butterfly who reside in Death's garden, and it's so beautifully woeful and sad, and I normally LOVE that in my books, my movies, my television, my music. GIVE ME THE SAD. But here, it just didn't quite pique my interest. And I think it's because of the medium. Comic books are short, they're dialogue driven, and highly visual. You can't really get across an entire novel's worth of content in one comic volume, and this story and these characters really needed that novel's depth. The plot felt a little rushed at times, it skipped over much needed character development, and I really felt like it lacked the weight that it should have carried. And this is especially certain in the second volume. The second volume felt completely rushed, very disjointed, and suffered from even less character development than we saw in the first. Again, I really loved the plot and idea of these two volumes... I just think they would've carried so much more weight had they been proper books, or maybe even large graphic novels.
I also had strong conflicting thoughts about the artwork. While Ríos paints beautiful, flowing, and moving panels, there were a lot of times where I had no idea what was going on. I couldn't tell what I was looking at, or what was happening, and it wasn't a once in a while occurrence, it was literally every other page. While her style is really magical and wispy and SO beautiful, I felt like it was more painterly than comic-like. I could stare at her work for hours, but it would also take me that long to decipher what was going on. On the other hand though, I'm currently reading a comic with very rudimentary and unimaginative art... so... I suppose the take away here is that I'm super picky. That's got to be it.
Will I continue to read this series? Probably... let's face it, even if I down right hated it, I'd probably continue to read it. I've started the series, I can always hope for more character development! And I DO want to see more of Ríos's work.
