The worst kind of house guest is the monster killing kind.
Creative Staff:
Story: Magdalene Visaggio
Art: Corin Howell
Colors: Valentina Pinto
Letterer: Zakk Saam
What They Say:
Kate Strand reboots her destructive life and moves to LA to be the superhero she always wanted to be–Calamity Kate: gun-toting monster killer. With her latest career change, she faces new challenges, relationships, and competition; desperate to show she’s worth a damn in a world overrun by zombies, vampires, demons, goblins, and the ultimate monster bounty: the Seven Fabled Beasts of Yore.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Calamity Kate is a book I had been looking forward to as it’s a four-issue series from Magdalen Visaggio, someone whose work I haven’t read before but had wanted to. With it being a ground floor series it was an ideal pickup and she definitely puts a lot in an opening issue, enough so that I had to double check to make sure I hadn’t missed a series before this didn’t already exist. I was also interested in this book because it has artwork from Corin Howell, who has three series that are all underway as of this month with this, The Girl in the Bay, and the soon to release Dark Red. The way projects can work and be scheduled, this doesn’t happen too often but it definitely gets her name out there in a lot of different areas.
Calamity Kate is very much a fun book as we’re dealing with a modern-day monster hunter. The world is as we know it now but it’s also been beset by a range of monsters for thousands of years thanks to the Seven Fabled Beasts of Yore from which they spawn. Kate has left New York and come to the West Coast where she’s become incredibly popular very quickly and is looking to make the biggest name in the world for herself with a goal of destroying said Beast. The six months that we get within this book is mostly off-panel but Visaggio sets things well and there are enough small changes (and some big ones) presented in the characters and locations through Howell that when it’s mentioned, well, it feels real. And that really feels authentic because of the two primary characters of the book.
Kate’s arrival in L.A. has her settling in Encino with Vera, a friend of hers going back years that she drifted away from when Vera moved west after having a baby. Vera’s life hasn’t been easy as she’s a single mother after her husband died and there’s some natural resentment there as Kate barely has had any contact with her for five years. So when Kate shows up, all noise and fury, it turns everything upside down with her house, her daughter, and her life. Kate does fit into things in her own way, but it’s a struggle for Vera as the house has way too many monster parts, has bodies gutted and cleaned in her simple kitchen, and is just a mess since Kate’s basically the college kid that hasn’t grown up. That said, Kate’s doing a lot of important work since the monster problem in this area was so bad that it was causing real fear with how it was impacting schools, social lives, and more for people.
In Summary:
Calamity Kate gets moving in a big and bold way with a lot going on and a world that feels like it has a lived-in experience to it, that these characters have been existing before the first page is finished. Visaggio keeps it moving well with a lot of different things at play from monster hunting, parenting, coping with different types of loss, and the struggle of friends that drifted away, all of which entices. Combine that with some great artwork from Howell where there’s a real life to Kate and something really fun in the dynamic between Vera and her daughter as well as just how Vera has to handle Kate, and it delights once you get into the rhythm of it. Definitely a shorts series worth spending time on.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 13th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
