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Blackwood: The Mourning After #1
Publisher: Dark Horse
Writer: Evan Dorkin
Artist: Veronica Fish & Andy Fish
Inks: Veronica Fish & Andy Fish
Colors: Veronica Fish & Andy Fish
Letters: Greg McKenna
Cover: Veronica Fish

I’ll start this review by saying I haven’t read past Blackwood content and am coming at it all with fresh eyes. That being said, I found that it was still easy to understand what had happened based on cues from the dialogue and scenery. The dialogue was very informative. Despite being dropped into the aftermath of the death of Dean Ogden and specifics of a world I am not yet familiar with, I didn’t struggle with reading and staying engaged with the first issue of Blackwood: The Mourning After.

It begins by focusing on four students at an occult school; Jamar, Reiko, Wren, and Stephen. The character designs were excellent for even minor characters and I was impressed with the variety. I wish some more time had been spent on showing the main four’s personalities but it is the first issue so not a huge problem. I saw some teenage bonding between the main four, but not much for their actual personalities except perhaps some angry outbursts from Wren and perceptiveness from Reiko. Jamar fell flat despite seeming in charge and Stephen’s most memorable trait was liking rice crispy treats from the box. More time was spent showing the politics of the school and tension between teachers as well as portraying the general disarray of the situation. Only one fight scene and one spooky event aside from all that so there was a lot of time devoted to setting the scene. I really enjoyed the modern references peppered in with all the fantastic 70s style colors and fun shapes.

There are clear visual and size differences between characters, I appreciated that the artist didn’t take the lazy way out when it came to the compositions within panels. There was very interesting layering with often at least three characters that happened quite frequently in the panels as well, it made for a more dynamic scene and allowed for many characters within a panel (something that’s usually avoided in comics, at least bad ones.) The clean lines and good organization made it so the larger amounts of characters within a single panel didn’t look too busy and distract the eye. While I have praise for the interesting use of layering, I do have to point out that in some panels there are technical perspective issues. Not all the panels by any means, but too many panels had characters that were too large or too small – even when accounting for size differences between characters and slightly rounded fishbowl-like perspectives. 

Overall, I’m looking forward to the next one! The stunning use of color in Blackwood: The Mourning After is a real treat.

Alex the Grave