Nettie’s journey only becomes more dangerous – as does she.
Creative Staff:
Story: Si Spurrier
Art: Nathan Gooden
Colors: Addison Duke
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
1899: Everyone keeps telling NETTIE BRIDGER that the frozen West is no place for a respectable lady. Lucky for her, she’s neither. She’s seen with her own eyes the impossible devils haunting the forests around BROKEHOOF, but the terror has only hardened her resolve.
She WILL find her missing son, whatever the cost. But avarice and starvation make desperate men deadlier than monsters, and the wealth of this hungry land may prove just as illusory as Nettie’s fading hope.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a couple of issues out from this Si Spurrier series, it wasn’t the easiest of starts but it’s gotten more engaging as it lays down a lot of foundations and historical pieces. Once it got rolling with the characters themselves it definitely worked better and it continues to expand to show us what’s going on in this area and with these people. Spurrier has Nathan Gooden here on the artwork, whose work on Barbaric recently really blew me away. Here, he’s working a completely different thing in a number of ways but it still adheres to that kind of grim and grimy world of those scraping out an existence. It has a really great sense of detail, hardened character designs, and a sense of being lived-in in all the worst ways to give it some solid authenticity.
With a good bit more learned now about the claim that her son had, and having seen some disturbing things along the way, the Inspector has managed to get her back to the little town for now just to try and warm up, have some food, and try to dissuade her from staying much longer. There’s some good discussion here about what happened in the past in how the inspector ended up here and how he may not be as bound as others, and it digs again into the way of the madness of the gold rush and all that comes with it. The origins of the town are grim enough but we see here just how fanatical the people are, especially when they discover someone in their midst who has no real interest in any of the wealth that they’re hunting for. She becomes dangerous because of her lack of intensity over it, which at least gets her out of town again for a bit.
That’s because MP has found a lot of gold flakes at the claim and that has the Inspector sending Bill to go with them and check it out. The whole thing at the claim itself just isn’t right as we see how what’s been laid there was designed as a trap of sorts to draw someone in while Bill is discovering plants in the area that shouldn’t exist. Everything feels off and the discovery of the cabin nearby and the issue there only serves to lead to more weirdness and uncertainty. The giant moose-like creature we’d seen before surfaces again, pouring gold from its mouth all over Nettie, but her wail that she has no interest in this just sets off what could be a real chain reaction of events with the beast spooked and likely about to act out. You can draw a lot of assumptions of what’s going on here if you’ve read similar pieces before, but I keep expecting the truth to be subverted as Spurrier begins to really reveal what’s happening.
In Summary:
I continue to really like the setting and the cast of characters that we get here as the intriguing story holds a lot of potential as it unfolds more. The visual design is great as we see some people that are really down on their luck and others that are scheming and plotting, all while putting a seemingly proper lady into the mix. Spurrier’s script has a few slow moments with some of the letter material that can be hard to read with the script, but the dialogue is strong and Gooden’s artwork really delivers some fantastic pages throughout. I can’t wait to see more of whatthere is to explore in this time and place in the world.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Vault Comics
Release Date: January 19th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
