Hornsby & Halo #15 // Review
Rose and Zach are discussing matters on the bus ride out to school. Strange things that seem to be going on. There's a lot of negative energy. Rose and.Zach are an entirely certain that the negativity isn't coming from them. They really need to be able to hone their powers. They really need to be able to get a better handle on them. This is particularly difficult as negative energy seems to have rolled in from out of town in Hornsby & Halo #15. Writer Peter J. Tomasi and artist Peter Snejbjerg continue an engaging coming-of-age supernatural serial with. colorist John Kalisz.
The immediate area is a tourist stop for a band called The Dead Tones. And as this is the world of the.Unbelievables, it's really not that much of a surprise that there are dead people involved. There are also people who are alive. Actually, it's a lot of monsters. There’s a reanimated man not unlike the one Frankenstein made. There’s a medusa. There’s a reptilian monster who can cast shadows. They seem to have run into a group of people who are making meth. Naturally, they're going to feel a little apprehensive about a bunch of monsters. Guns come out. Things get crazy.
The Unbelievables universe expands just a little bit with a plot arc that doesn’t quite have the title characters meeting-up with the new arrivals just yet. As a result, the single issue that opens this particular plot arc feels a little bit at odds with itself. About half the issue seems like little more than a preview to stories that are going to come later with this particular group of characters. The other half of it is actually really tightly trained on the two title characters and what they're going through at the moment. But it doesn't really feel like it's about them as much as it should be because there are these other characters that need to be introduced.
The action is brought to the page with a dynamic sense of aggression. The Dead Tones seems suitably monstrous while also being heroic. Characters design with respect to them is particularly sharp. The more dramatic end of things doesn't have a chance to be nearly as nuanced or subtle as one might hope. There is, however, a hell of a lot of conversation going on between the two title characters. And the fact that their conversation comes across as anything other than a couple of Talking Heads is quite an accomplishment.
It's inevitable thatRose and Zach are going to run into other supernatural characters. It would be very difficult to do a series like this without having the supernatural as a fundamental component of it. However, the ideal situation would be to have the rest of the universe seen through the eyes of the main characters. That it would flow organically from them and their encounters with the rest of the world. Simply throwing another group of characters into the middle of a book feels just a little jarring.
