Black Ritual: The Book of Nyx #2 // Review
Nyx has seen her own death. That’s got to be the most horrifying thing that anyone can see. The good news is that she’s seen her own death and she’s still alive. The bad news is that there seems to be a great deal of danger surrounding her and there’s really not getting around that. Things are going to get a lot more complicated before she’s going to be able to deal with them. in Black Ritual: The Book of Nyx #2. Writer Thomas Healy continues his Spawn Universe-based mini-series with artist Nat Jones. The series continues to feel like one of the more stylishly dramatic titles in the whole of the Spawn Universe.
Nyx is looking for some sort of safety. So she heads in to Greenwich Comics. She knows a guy there. With any luck he might be able to help her out...or at least give her some sense of stability. Turns out the guy is into more than just comics these days. He’s got a whole library of rare occult books in the basement. Nyx should feel right at home down there, but there’s going to be more that she’s going to have to deal with. She’s going to have to go back to a place where she isn’t exactly welcome...
There are a lot of ways that a contemporary tale of the occult could get derailed. Healy seems to be staunchly avoiding most of them, which is really remarkably reassuring. He’s keeping the plot simple and psychological with a bit of heavy darkness around the edges. The interpersonal politics of the plot seem to be lifting the basic machinery of the plot away from deeper concerns of magic and supernatural darkness, but Healy is doing a very respectable job of keeping the right amount of darkness aroudn the edges of the central emotional drama, so it still feels suitably cool.
It’s a modern, metropolitan supernatural horror sort of a thing with lots of neon and shadows and supernatural radiance. So it doesn’t look like it’s anything that hasn’t been done before. And what about Nyx? She looks a bit like a generically beautiful goth girl. So what is it about the visuals of Black Ritual that make it so very stylish and appealing? Maybe it’s the angles that Jones is using. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that nearly EVERYTHING looks kind of cute on some level. Or maybe it’s the rich saturation of Jones’ colors around all that heavy inking. Whatever it is, Jones is bringing the series to the page with an irresistibly appealing energy that makes for one of the best visual packages currently running through the Spawn Universe.
It’s pretty. It’s cute. It’s cool. It’s dark. It’s what one might have always secretly wanted out of Doctor Strange or John Constantine...but never really managed to get. The contemporary punk aesthetic feels right at home in and around the edges of the occult. It’s not teribly original, but it all works together so well.
