A new secret begins to reveal itself.
Creative Staff:
Story: Cavan Scott
Art: Corin Howell
Colors: Triona Farell
Letterer: Andworld Design
What They Say:
Captured! Betrayed by the only person she ever trusted, Gina Meyer played the spy game and lost. Now, as she stares death in the face, will the ghosts of the past return to give her hope for the future? Cavan Scott and Corin Howell’s supernatural thriller takes a dark turn.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a pretty interesting second arc underway that has taken us to a couple of different areas, I appreciated the refocus on Gina and Quill a bit. Cavan Scott has moved the storyline along well while keeping it loose enough and vague enough in certain ways and points to allow for some good twists, which this installment plays with nicely. Corin Howell has been a favorite for a while now in general across several books but it feels like with this series you can really see the growth across it and so many moments where it just shines more. The layouts, especially the two-page spread we get here, is really well done and have me excited to see even more of her artistic growth over time.
With Gina and Quill having been picked up by Lady Yastrick the last time around, she’s intent on getting the information out of her that she wants now. And that really makes up the concept for the entire issue, which could be a problematic in certain hands. Here, Scott wants to use it as a way to break down Gina just a bit but more to open up her past just enough to give Yastrick what she needs. To do so, Yastrick essentially executes Gina multiple times over a good period of time and enjoys doing so while observing how Gina handles these incidents. Initially, she’s with Quill but he’s being pulled directly into hell pretty quickly because of contracts and agreements he’s made before. And that just leaves Gina to figure things out herself, at least until she’s brought back to life and put through the questioning process again.
And it’s one that works well as Yastrick utilizes a few others to try and get into the core of things and figure out what it is that’s going on in Rome and what Section 26 is up to, or at least the pretense of that. But what ends up attracting Yastrick’s real interest is when Gina ends up with her mother while dead and working through the whole process with her. Yastrick discovers that Gina’s mother hasn’t a lick of magic about her and that makes Gina all the more interesting because she now wants to know who the truth mother is, and that opens us up to a whole new series of paths that could change things significantly for Gina and potentially others depending on who all is involved. It’s fun to watch as Gina copes with this as Yastrick sets the reveal for a nicely elegant dinner setting and it feels like just the right nudge of extra torture on her part for it.
In Summary:
Shadow Service spends some quality time with Gina here as it kind of slows things down, except for all the death and torture. Scott’s script keeps things moving yet tense and careful in all the right ways. Howell has some really great stuff here in design in general as I already loved Yastrick from the previous issue and only more so here. But some of the layouts are really strong and the flow of the story through everything highlights a great way to bring it all to light and keep the reader engaged without dealing with standard formatting. I’m excited to see what comes next.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Vault Comics
Release Date: May 26th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
