I can never speak in absolute truths, but I can tell you I have gone through the process of this comic writing cycle scores and scores of times, and it never ever seems to change.
I don’t know if I find comfort in it anymore or not.
Wherever you are in your cycle today, know we’re all getting tumbled by this, constantly, and sometimes in our own personal and specific hell way.
This is a comic worth buying. Then reading. Then thinking about for a while. Then studying and pulling it apart to see how it works.
The story from Dennis Culver is a cracker. The cold open on our leading lady in battle, in her prime, and showing how epic she is. It’s perfect in how it sets up character, a threat, a world, and the tone all at once in just a handful of pages.
Then we cut to the title double page spread, shown above, and it’s so beautiful. All that negative space, on the left side of the page, so Bloody Bliss [as she was known] is looking back over it, a showcase of an empty past. There were battles, and people, and heroism, and adventure, but at the end of her life, looking back on it all, there’s not much that’s stayed with her. Certainly not much of good worth remembering. It’s a genius element of the layout from the team, and Justin Greenwood absolutely nails the emptiness in which we find our character.
From there, the story takes us into a hero’s journey, with a great ending to this issue that has me very excited to dive straight into #2 as soon as I can get my hands on it.
If you’re looking for something new at your comic shop this week, lay your heart and soul down on this one, I really enjoyed the balancing act of a huge D&D style world with this aged Red Sonya type, set against the amazing art and captivating story.
CRONE #1 – go buy it.
Without Fear 