The first issue of An Unkindness of Ravens, from BOOM! Studios, introduces us to Wilma, a young woman who’s new in town.
She’s just arrived for her first day at high school in the town of Crab’s Eye. A school where you scoot out of the way of the larger, more dangerous students, skitter sideways down the halls, avoiding the bullies who are full of themselves, eyeing their next prey. Pray you go unnoticed.
Dan Panosian writes, Marianna Ignazzi illustrates, and Fabiana Mascolo colours this story, a mix of old, new and haunted. There’s a girl missing, and Wilma looks just like her. So everybody says, at Dansforth High School. Can Wilma navigate the complicated social avenues, withstand the pressures of being ‘new kid’?
The story launches itself upright, and gets to a brief gallop, before inviting us to continue along in issue two. In the meantime, we’re told a bit of the creepy, witch-burning customs of the town’s past, and learned a bit of Wilma’s own back story. The drawings (btw: Panosian draws the historical prologue) are confident of line, easy to follow, with a consistent view point. That is, the point of view is sensible, we navigate it well, there are no gratuitous Raven’s Eye views or puzzling panel sequences. There is a certain restraint on the visual drama, which perhaps acts to normalize the reading experience as well. In other words, the drawings fit the story, encapsulate the scenes, but don’t detract or magnify or intensify it.
Mascolo’s colour tends to stay in the yellow/brown camp, earth tones. The subdued colour treatment also marries well with the dialogue and visual lines: we readers have enough going on to keep us entertained, waiting for the fierce drama that is sure to follow.
BOOM! Studios An Unkindness Of Ravens #1, $3.99 for 24 pages of content
Newsdesk