Little continues to go well for Yonna.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matthew Erman
Art: Lisa Sterle
Colors: Gab Contreras
Letterer: Jim Campbell
What They Say:
The Hounds of Love are hunting. Next stop: San Sangre, a city of blood, faith, and bad vibes. The stomping grounds of curse-hunters and gunslingers. But with a special kind of horror watching from the utility sheds, do our vampire biker dirtbags know what they’re getting themselves into? Find out in Witchblood Chapter 3: The Darkness in the Sheds of Town!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a couple of issues behind it so far, Witchblood continues to be an interesting struggle to read as I haven’t connected with it in terms of character or story but I’m digging the artwork a whole lot. Matthew Erman’s script kept things moving in a pretty busy way as we move along in the plot while trying to understand Yonna’s world, which we still hare. Lisa Sterle continues the fantastic work in the artwork department here as we get a really creative design style for all of the characters and how they move and operate in this world that makes it a lot of fun to watch unfold. Gab Contreras definitely takes this up a few notches with the color designs, especially with Amaya’s later material here, and it delivers wonderfully.
This book has us dealing with Yonna for about half of it as she works with her “bird” after giving it some improvised juice she concocts in order to help her get closer to finding Esme. It’s a nice bit of southwestern style magic combined with Yonna’s style and the birddog definitely made me chuckle. Plus, we get a nice panel showing off her map of America and I really want to know how accurate it is because there’s just so many questions to be asked. Her time connecting with the witch Yoshi provides for some nice visual material and a chance for Yonna to just have what comes across as a decent conversation overall, especially since Yoshi is a shed-dwelling witch and that has its own narrative. Which, of course, blends into Atlacoya’s.
Atlacoya has been hanging out with Texas Red, who makes a really great stinger page entrance at the end, and we see her in pursuit of the shed-witch because she’s been stealing eyes (which Yonna does chastise her about). It’s fun to see Atla go through this process a bit since we get to see some time outside of the sheds around San Sangre where Atla thinks things are happening and it’s just amusing to see how people are kind of accepting things. When she does make her formal move, it’s when Yonna is there and that leads to a decent fight that gets underway – at least until the vampire biker gang shows up looking for trouble themselves but with the skills to take down witches. It’s a big mess of things, which is why it goes bigger with Texas Red arriving, and feels like it’s just turning into a big pile that rolls up all sorts of crazy action incidents together.
In Summary:
I get the big picture idea of Witchblood with what it’s trying to do with its story and structure. But the elements making it up that give it its personality are just so all over the map that I’m still not sure what kind of world this is. It has a lot of neat things to it and I’m enjoying the visual design as it progresses, but it’s hard to really connect with a lot of it in terms of character as it doesn’t take the time to really just let them breathe and explain/explore things enough. It has some very fun moments here and it goes big in creative ways, but it feels like it lacks a solid enough foundation to connect with.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Vault Comics
Release Date: May 26th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
