Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: Laura Braga
Colors: J. Nanjan
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Raven spots her father, Trigon, amid the chaos of the supernatural Nazi invasion, and disappears into an inter-dimensional magical portal to confront him one on one.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With so many stories and character interactions going on amid this overall Leningrad arc, DC Comics Bombshells does another character focus here that will turn the tide of the battle for a bit. As we’ve seen before, Marguerite Bennett does a great job in distilling these characters down to their basics but building upon them in engaging ways with their personal stories and connections to others. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s doing that this time with Laura braga, who I think is my favorite artist to work on the Raven character. So making this a Raven story with some good flashback pieces that provide the nods toward Beauty and the Beast means it all clicks very well for me in a fun and heart wrenching way.
Amid the battle that’s sprawling across the area, Raven’s coming across her father Trigon at this stage is something that just sets her off. That she puts them into a place together so they can talk is a familiar trick and it works well so that it’s outside of the battle itself without trying to do the whole banter/dialogue thing in a way that usually only works in comics, if that. This iteration of Trigon still takes a lot of getting used to but that we finally get him talking is helpful, though it completely throws Raven off. He makes the case plainly though that it would have been hard for him to woo her mother if he couldn’t talk. Not impossible, but harder to achieve. This doesn’t thaw things between them but it does open up to more conversation about the past and his version of stories compared to what a mother told a young child.
In a lot of ways it’s still the same, but just with a tinge more anger and sadness about the harsh realities of the world. With the flashbacks showing some of their happiness in order to give it a little balance, a lot is focused on the Joker’s Daughter and Killer Frost with what they achieved in their hunt for Raven and children like her. What’s compelling about it is that we get the anger and sadness that Trigon felt from her loss, still unable to hear or even say her name, combined with the fact that he had no idea where Raven ended up after that because her mother had tried to hide her from their enemies before that and he couldn’t follow. It details into some interesting things along the way, including the why of how her magic works and its connection to him, but also the reaffirmation of how her anger can lead to some very dark places.
In Summary:
Bombshells gives us a solid tale here with a heavy focus on Raven and her family that helps to expand things well. It builds without radically changing, no “surprise origin!” elements here or anything, and that gives it some good natural growth and weight. Laura Braga is someone that I’ve sung the praises of in this series for dozens of issues and this one is no exception. Her work with Raven is fantastic, whether it’s the younger and more innocent moments or her more transformative moments into anger along the way. I’m still not too keen on this incarnation of Trigon overall but she brings some good life to him here and conveys the emotions very well to make it engaging and sympathetic on some level.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: May 19th, 2017
MSRP: $0.99