Witchblade #11 // Review
Detective Sara Pezzini is out of town. She’s in a pocket dimension. And she’s in danger. She’s in a Creosote hive being attacked by a monster. The good news is that she’s also in possession of a monster that’s in possession of her, so she stands a chance of surviving in Witchblade #11. Writer Marguerite Bennett and artist Giuseppe Cafaro continue their adventures with Sara. Color comes to the page courtesy of Arif Prianto. Action tears its way across the page with palpable dramatic energy in an atmosphere that feels fairly immersive as it impressively resonates off the comics page.
She’s fully in the grip of the weapon known as the Witchblade. It’s wielding her as she’s wielding it. She’s launching it and herself straight at a monster which has become colossal. Razor charp talons slash away at the beast, but she’s not really paying attention to that. She’s lost in the instinct of the weapon that is unleashing swift and slicing death to the creature in question. Black blood and viscera are spraying and spiralling everywhere. It’s getting all over the place and she really doesn’t seem to care. All it takes is a few of the right words and she’s back in her right mind...for now...
Bennett gives the art team plenty of room to work in and around the edges of everything that’s going on in the opening fight. Not too much narration. Not too much dialogue. The art is given the opportunity to really define what it is that’s going on. This gives Bennett more of an opportunity to focus on subtle dramatic complexities going on in and around the edges of everything else that’s going on. It’s a smart move on Bennett’s part that creates a respectable amount of balance for the eleventh issue in the series.
Cafaro does a brilliant job with the action. The sheer anger and aggression showing through on Sara’s face is beautiful and overwhelming on a whole bunch of different levels. There’s speed and precision of the aggression in the opening fight scene. It’s the kind of energy that artists so often try to produce on the page but so often fail to achieve. Cafaro wields the intensity of that dynamic like a scalpel that might be a broadsword. Impressive stuff. Cafaro manages the more subtle end of the drama quite well as well. Prianto’s color effects amp-up the mystical energies at work while providing a firm emotional grounding to the issue in the form of depth carved-into page and panel with the color.
Bennett continues to cast Sara in a direction of fantasy horror as the 11th issue becomes the 12th. The gritty street-level action is likely to return to the series on the other side of what has been a thoroughly enjoyable trip into the fantastic as the series reaches the end of its first year. The current reboot of Witchblade continues to show a great deal of impressive promise and potential.
