The strangeness ramps up and the close calls are getting closer.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Sable
Art: Giorgio Pontrelli
Colors: Pippa Bowland
Letterer: Thomas Mauer
What They Say:
Miranda Keller has been sent to the Miskatonic Valley to investigate a series of killer bombings targeting the community’s elite. She’s convinced that radicals are to blame. But her partner, Tom Malone, a retired Brooklyn detective, sees connections to a supernatural event in his past that left him scarred and scared, leading the pair to an occult conspiracy that pits them against forces from beyond this world.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening issue of Miskatonic was a hard read. An interesting read but one that really took some time to adjust to its setting and get a handle on. I haven’t read much of Mark Sable’s work so there’s an adjustment to the style of it and all, but there was also just trying to connect with the setting and time period, especially as a resident “near these parts” where the story takes place. Giorgio Pontrelli continues to produce some really good pages here as I like the surreal things that we get with the people and creature-ish things and all, but I also like the attention to detail with the more mundane settings of the day and especially with Miranda’s outfits.
Miranda and Tom’s flight from the fish-men that are attacking them is successful, thanks to the train coming by, but it’s more that they can get on it and move at high speed more than anything else. When bullets don’t seem to work, you’re kind of out of options in the darkness of the night. This puts the pair back in Arkham for a time to try and re-calibrate and figure out their next plan of attack in the investigation. Which, for the moment, involves not filling Hoover on things just yet – at least from Tom’s perspective. It’s amusing to see that Miranda instead calls him almost instantly and gives him some stuff to work with but also promises some photographic evidence that will be very much up his alley and tide him over for a bit. Tom and Miranda are definitely an unusual pairing and there’s a lot going on here, but even as much as they trust each other after what happened, both are still keeping significant secrets.
The story from there has them investigating at the college as events have been cropping up there and Miranda even makes an in with the dead professor’s daughter, saving her from some harsh words from another professor. This gets them an invite to her party that she’s throwing to distract herself from all of the death and ugliness of things, fitting in perfectly with our vision of this period thanks to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and there’s an amusing glam and glitz to it combined with her skill at hypnotism and seeing through people. I love that she’s playing up the whole magic thing – and nearly seducing Miranda as well – but she sees through what Tom is pretty quickly and sets the stage for what’s to come – which is move Lovecraftian darkness in the mix as we see from the final teasing tantalizing pages.
In Summary:
I really have no idea what to make of Miskatonic at this point. I get the larger design of it all and the general approach, but the flow of it is something that I feel like I’m swimming against in order to connect with it. Almost like I’m wrestling with the book to get on an even ground with it. I like the concept and characters and the artwork is great. And I love the weirdness factor as well. But something about it continues to be just jarring enough that I can’t get into the groove of it. This issue pushes us forward ever more with all the key elements and I’m intrigued to be sure, but it also has me wary with each new issue now.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: December 16th, 2020
MSRP: $3.99