Inferno Girl Red Book Two #1 // Review
Cássia Costa is working with new communications tech that might be a bit of a challenge. Ideally it’s the sort of thing that would be tested in a more controlled environment. However, that doesn't seem to be an option as there are monsters that Cássia needs to eliminate rather quickly. There isn't going to be much of an opportunity for her to catch her breath in. Inferno Girl Red Book Two #1. Writer Matt Groom works a special kind of magic with artist Erica D’Urso and colorist Igor Monti in the first issue of a whole new chapter in the life of Cássia.
The monsters are jet black beasts with visible glowing, blue spines and ribcages. Their heads are skulls. They’d look kind of menacing if they didn’t look so much like something from the cover of a 1980s heavy metal album. Cássia can't exactly pause to admire what they look like. She needs to stop them from killing people. She’s in control of a great deal of power as Inferno Girl. Naturally, she's going to want to get rid of the threat immediately. So she's going to use the biggest weapon she has. Might not be the best idea, but she's still learning.
Groom delivers a story that works on multiple different levels. The full team that's working with Cássia has a very engaging ensemble dynamic that places itself right in the center of the issue. There's a lot of action and drama going on around the edges of everything. Groom is careful to ensure that it all moves in a way that doesn't run into itself. This can be particularly challenging as the current series is only going to run three issues. Everything has to be out a very tight schedule, but I can't feel like it's on a very tight schedule. Groomed does a really good job of pacing everything for the first issue.
D’Urso’s work is hugely appealing. The basic design elements hit the page with a very sharp and stylish sense of impact. Action shoots across the page with pleasantly overwhelming impact. The overall look and feel of. Cássia’s city and school have a very distinct presence on the page that feels absolutely gorgeous when it's really being presented in its full glory. There's a lot that's going on. That's really enjoyable. And above all there's a lot of nuance in the drama that hits the page in various different ways from posture to facial expressions to the angles that the action is being rendered in.
There is such a solid and well rendered sense of grounding in Cássia and the world she exist in. This is the type of thing that would typically be more at home in an ongoing series in American comics. As well paste as it all is, it feels like it's something that really is building more momentum for something that would be more durable than a three issue miniseries. It's almost disappointing how good it is given the fact that it's only going to run for three issues. Invariably a title like this is going to run for multiple series if it’s as successful as it should be. But that's not the same. It's a whole different feeling when it's envisioned as being an ongoing series.
