Odin #1 // Review
They laugh and say that they’re Nazis. Adela thinks they’re a bunch of dirtbags who want to feel special. They don’t seem to know that Adela isn’t actually one of them. Not right away anyway. She’s going to become one of them in a rather horrifying trip. That trip begins in Odin #1. The writing team of Marguerite Bennett and James Tynion IV open a horror drama with artist Letizia Cadonici and colorist Jordie Bellaire. The opening issue is a bit of a journey. Adela serves as a guide into a sinister space inhabited by a group of young people who are in way over their heads.
Adela is an undercover journalist. It took her a lot of time and energy to find herself in the right places with the right people to investigate a whole subculture of neo-pagan white supremacists who are looking for some kind of transcendental experience in the fatherland. Adela gets to know everyone, but she IS keeping her distance until they arrive at a kind of destination. It appears as though the gods have blessed them with a stage to slowly feast on. There’s a connection between them. Even Adela can feel it. But there’s a real darkness in that connection...
Bennett and Tynion dive into a folk horror that fuses with a narrative that draws inspiration from Hunter S. Thompson and current anxieties about increasingly isolated subcultures that move restlessly in the shadows of contemporary mainstream society. Bennett and Tynion are working with a rather large ensemble of characters that all manage to feel deep and conflicted and complicated on some level, which is quite an accomplishment given how quickly things have to move in order to rush through the introduction of the series. Bennett and Tynion have done a good job of pacing an eerily engaging horror.
Cadonici carves a subtly disturbing desolation into the page with simple forms that are presented simply with simple shadows. The silhouettes that make it to the page for strikingly primal. There is a whole lot of minor detail in the panel, but there doesn't really need to be. The emotions that are being captured for the page feel remarkably articulate. Bellaire’s colors our given plenty of space to do what they have to do. As with Exquisite Corpses, Bellaire he is given the opportunity to wash over the page with radiant and dominant colors. A bus ride into the wilderness is overcome with red. The journey into the wilderness is electrified by a cool blue. The collar is remarkably stylish. This is some of Bellaire’s best work in the past couple of years.
The horror really reveals itself by the end of the issue. However, there's so much that hasn't been fully illuminated. It's going to be one hell of a journey for everyone involved. The story may have started firmly grounded in folk horror and contemporary drama, but it may be diving pretty far into something altogether more supernatural as the series progresses.
