Disney Gargoyles: Demona #2 // Review
It’s 1109 and Demona is travelling with Vikings. She doesn’t exactly like the humans that she’s fighting alongside, but this IS a situation where humans are killing humans, so it’s not a difficult choice for her to accompany them. And since they’re essentially nomadic and she’s more than a bit of a nomad herself, it’s a perfect fit...for now. Events may yet conspire to move her away from her human allies in Disney Gargoyles: Demona #2. Writer Greg Weisman and artist Frank Paur deliver a little bit of backstory on Gargoyle’s single most appealing character with the aid of colorist Robby Bevard.
Demona flies into battle with her adopted daughter Angelika. The young warrior is a bit inexperienced, but she definitely has talent. Angelika hasn’t exactly been watching her flanks, but she DOES have good talent teaching her. Demona and her companions travel East over the course of the next couple of years. The combat might seem appealing to her, but she’s not exactly one to stay with one group of people for a very long time. There are those who seem to be going their own way. It’s perfectly fine, though--Demona has always worked better on her own.
Weisman moves the narrative along very quickly. The second issue covers a solid couple of years in the 12th century. Key moments in the time span seem well-chosen, but the overall feel of the issue comes across more as an outline than a cohesive narrative. It’s very, very difficult to do a longer-range narrative in any intrinsically visual medium. The long-range overview lacks the immediacy of a more immediate story. Very few comic books attempt a longer-range story that packs a full couple of years between two covers...and it IS a bit of a novelty to read an issue laid-out like that, but it feels distant and rushed.
Paur does a good job of bringing the long-range, two-year time period to the page with tapestry-inspired visuals that occasionally allow the title character an opportunity to really think and process the substance of the moment. Subtlety and drama wash across the page at odd angles that would have seemed a lot more powerful if they had been allowed to play-out in the greater detail that would have been afforded by a tighter look at individual moments in Demona’s life over the course of the time period covered.
Demona remains the single most appealing character in the Gargoyles franchise. It’s a bit of a disappointment to get a close-up on her that feels like so much of a summary of such a long period of time. It’s scarcely satisfying, but the emotional reality at the heart of the character remains interesting as the series continues. There’s real potential at the heart of the drama that Weisman is delivering to the page. It would need to be framed much better in order to really live-up to that potential.
