“Woman on Fire”
Creative Staff:
Story: Christos Gage
Art: Marc Borstel
Colors: Jordie Escuin Llorach
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
From the pages of Vampirella and Sacred Six comes Nyx, daughter of a human and the mad god Chaos himself! Nyx’s mortal side has been growing stronger, troubling her with all-too human emotions. Fortunately (for her), there’s still the side of her that transforms into a demon of living flame…and requires her to feed on the life force of living beings to survive.
Can a half-demon find her place in our world…happiness…even love? Probably not, as she’s about to get dragged into her dad’s workplace problem.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a lot of different Vampirella books running these days, I’ll admit that I’m a bit wary to get into another. Particularly a character like Nyx. For this series, it has Christos Gage handling the writing duties and I’ve enjoyed a number of his projects over the years but I’m not a regular reader of his work. There’s some awkwardness at times with this, mostly just in trying to figure out where it all takes place, but otherwise it’s fairly standard stuff. Marc Borstel has a decent handle on the artwork with designs that work but some of it just feels awkward at times with how Nyx carries herself and some of the flow of the action. It doesn’t look and feel like a Vampirella book, which is a good thing, but it hasn’t really defined its own style here yet either.
This series seems to be taking place some time after the Seduction of the Innocent book, which I don’t think I read, and I’ve mostly seen Nyx through the Vengeance of Vampirella series recently. Here, she’s starting off just trying to find some food in the world to stay alive, which means consuming people through the staff-like item she has, and she ends up interrupting a criminal trade deal that’s going on. It’s plenty of violence but also a struggle for her in handling this human form, but she gets back on her feet after a cop comes to help her but also reveals his own criminal intent. Basically, Nyx walks into a bunch of bad people and they all pretty much die, but she gets to live and move onto another day. It’s not exactly an inspirational part but it makes clear who she is at this stage.
Eventually, she ends up handling her time among humanity and we see her later in a hip young club where she opts to go after a guy that clearly shouldn’t be there. A divorced father of a pre-tween girl, Nyx engages with him well but discovering that he has a daughter has her ready to run. But we see how she’s ended up discovering some actual enjoyment in spending time with him, both in the simplicity of traditional sex after centuries of everything under the stars, to the usual dating things. It’s interesting to see a domestic side of Nyx and how she’s finding it enjoyable in ways she never expected, but naturally, there’s trouble brewing in the realm below that’s attempting to draw her in. It’s all straightforward and simple, the relationship won’t work but she’s now experienced more, that you can see the journey she’ll take. But if it does, at the end, connect with the Vengeance series, all of it is undercut by what we know of her there…
In Summary:
Having gone through so much for two years of stories with Nyx in the Vengeance series, going back to a different time with her is an interesting approach. Basically, it feels like you have to disconnect this from other books for the most part. Which is fine and I’ll be able to do it after a couple of issues and as this establishes itself more as its own thing. Gage’s script is solid enough once it gets past the awkward introduction, but it also feels like we’re racing through some things quicker than we need to. Borstel’s artwork feels similar in a way in that it has some interesting elements to it but that it’s not sure what it really wants to be just yet and how to define the look for our leading character and the book in general.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: November 10th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
