Witchblade #14 // Review
Detective Sara Pezzini ducks under the police line and into the crime scene investigation. It’s outside in an alley. It’s night. THe mural over the scene of the crime looks demonic. SHe looks at the thing and knows that it’s not some exotic kind of rare and expensive spray paint, so they won’t be able to track down the suspect through their art medium. It’s going to be a complicated investigation in Witchblade #14. Writer Marguerite Bennett and artist Giuseppe Cafaro continues a compelling supernatural crime serial with colorist Arif Prianto. The mix of crime and the supernatural continues to be quite impressive.
The mural had once been a Virgin of Guadalupe. Now it looks like a demon drawn by Mike Mignolla. Ano ther investigator on the scene wonders how she could possibly tell the kind of spraypaint used just by looking at it, but she’s got supernatural awareness that comes along with the weapon that’s fused itself to her. She knows more than that.She know that the VIrgin hadn’t been painted over...the paint actually rearranged itself. So clearly this isn’t an ormal homicide that she’s investigating. Clearly this is something that leans-over into the supernatural. Thankfully, she’s got a wapon to fight that sort of thing.
Bennett manages a bit more dramatic complexity to the page than one would expect to find in a traditional crime drama. There’s an intiguing complexity that Bennett managed in her rendering of the basic relations between cops and the people they are supposed to be serving. Beyond that, the slow fade-in of the supernatural look surprpizingly appealign in an issue that really could almost work as a standalone story. It’s actually a really, really good place to start for people not already familiar with the characer, which is pretty impressive given the complexity of what’s going on on the page.
There’s some really impressive work being done on the visuals by Cafaro and Prianto. Some clever layout makes for a refreshingly dynamic perspective on the crime scene investigation. It’s not just the mural and the intrigue...even the way Cafaro gets Detective Pezzini under the police line looks fresh, dynamic and immersive. The visual reality of the supernatural action hits the page with impressive force in work that fels sharply composed in the pag with color that amplifies the radiant moodiness of everything that Bennett is weaving into the story. Very cool stuff.
The balance between greedy, crime, drama, and supernatural thriller are well integrated into an overall horror that remains one of the most compelling things on the comic book rack right now. There's no questioning that this is an improvement over earlier incarnations of the series. So often it had tried to be one thing or another without really being all that successful at being anything at all. It's nice to see a well balanced approach to which blade that seems to be building quite a bit of momentum as it continues into what looks to be a satisfying second year.
