Witchblade #153
Publisher: Top Cow
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Diego Bernard
Cover: John Tyler Christopher
Sara’s investigation has put her right in the middle of the fight between the biker witches and the servants of The Flesh. The prize in this battle happens to be access to a youth giving fountain. This is also the reason why the witches have kidnapped Sara’s new friend, Cain, believing he knows exactly where it is.
Now that we’re three issues into the story arc, Seeley reveals a bit more about The Flesh and the price those who use its power have to pay to stay young. This must be why Sara’s reflecting on her own age was brought to the forefront in part 1. The entire aging part of the story doesn’t engage as much as when Jackie shows up. Since he’s the only one that knows how things are supposed to be, this subplot carries a lot more weight and interest. Also, the biker witches seem thrown in just to get some T&A. Sure, there’s room for that in comics, but when it comes off looking like a parody then what’s the point? There is a much better balance of inner dialog and character interaction that helped the story flow much better than the previous issues. Though when it comes to the last line of dialog, it helped to kill what little redeeming quality the book had in that area.
What can be said about Bernard’s artwork that hasn’t been stated in the previous reviews? The guy draws one good looking book which helps make it easier to get through. Unfortunately, we only get one huge action scene (once again), but he makes Sara’s knockout punch look good. His backgrounds are deep and rich, sucking you in visually. Fred Benes and Arif Prianto deserve a lot of credit as well for making Bernard’s pencils look as good as they do. Maybe later on down the line we can get more action sequences and cool panels in lieu of some of the T&A shots.
It’s been hard to see what all of the hype is about concerning this story arc and where it’s going. Calling this “deep” because Sara is suddenly concerned with her age is like calling it “progressive” if it was written about a minority character who “rises above adversity.” Cliché and a bit stereotypical. I’m sure there’s something here for fans of Seeley, but as a Witchblade fan it’s not so much fun.
Infinite Speech
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