Crowbound #2 // Review
The scarecrow queen asks her if she's lost. She claims that she's not. But the scarecrow queen knows better. The fact that she's there at all is probably a good suggestion that she's not where she should be. Very possibly lost. But the scarecrow queen is nice. She smiles. Tells her that she'll find her. The scarecrow queen points out of falling star. She's running after it. Scarecrow can't imagine why. It's going to be there regardless. And there's going to be a lot. They have to deal with in.Crowbound #2. Writer Jeff Lemire and artist Dustin Nguyen continue a compelling fantasy horror story.
It was falling like a star. But it wasn't a star. It was an eater. It had been a long time since the last eater arrived. And it wasn't exactly an uneventful occasion. Things were awful. And now she's concerned. And understandably afraid of everything. The scarecrow queen isn't really a whole lot of help, though. And she just says that there's no sense in running. It'll find you. It always will. Kind of like the scarecrow queen herself. She'll always know. She'll always be able to see. Nevertheless, there is a strong need for personal survival.
There's a real poetry Lemire is bringing to the page. If there's a strong sense of urgency about everything. And a surreal sense of abstract horror about the script that clings to the page. It's got a fantasy element that also feels very much like a fairytale. And that does wonders for the horror that's going on. It has a kind of primal, primordial. Reality about it that adds considerably to the overall feel of the overwhelming horror of what's meeting the page. The urgency. The danger. The sense of doom and futility. It all clings to the surface quite well. And it propels the action forward.
Nguyen keeps the art simple. It would be all too easy to overwhelmed the page with darkness. Especially given the overall tone of what's going on. But this particular artist uses light and white on the page to lock in a sense of horror that suits the story quite well. There's nothing here that's overwhelmingly breathtaking. A fantasy can have a tendency to lend itself to that. Larger than life things that are supernatural. However, Lemire is working with things that are much more subtle even in their ominousness. And the art does a really good job of embracing that nuanced sense of doom and futility.
It's nice to see this thing moving forward in a way that feels quite distinctly unlike any other sword and sorcery fantasy style narrative. That's on the rack today. There's a lot that piles into it that feels remarkably well articulated. And yet there isn't quite enough fresh originality in it to really capture the imagination quite yet. However, it is leaning off in a direction of being very compelling. And really it's only a matter of time before things really develop. It will be interesting to see where this goes in the future.
