Creative Staff:
Story: Elliot Kalan
Art: Andrea Mutti
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
Maniac Harry plus Opening Day at Yankee Stadium. YOU DO THE MATH! Civil servant-turned-angel-of-vengeance Gina Greene is determined to make this her final showdown with the Maniac. Can she finally destroy the monster that’s haunted her all these years? And how much of New York will she have to burn to make it happen?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a five-issue run getting the original series going and then throwing us in an unexpected and bigger direction with this second series, Elliot Kalan brings things to a natural close here but with more than enough threads to pull on. There are areas where it doesn’t feel like we got to the story overall, such as with the little girl, but the core story has a sense of completeness here. Like all past issues, Andrea Mutti is handling the artwork and coloring for it. I’ve sung Mutti’s praises for years now and thoroughly enjoy the projects he takes on as his character design work is great with some neat elements that he utilizes. There’s a particular sense about them that I’m just drawn to on top of already great worldbuilding skills.
Shifting from the school to Yankee Stadium isn’t a surprise and it really allows the property to shift things up a lot. Having it on the trains in the first series was its own kind of horror while the school aspect taps into a different kind of fear that let us get all tense with each issue. We saw a lot of bodies fall during that as Gina and Zelda try to stop the Maniac, but now he’s managed to get away enough to start carving through a baseball stadium full of people. People that are somewhat inebriated or caught up in the panic as the blood starts flowing. Mutti’s splash page for this is just horrifying to watch with all of its detail and I absolutely love seeing how the color balance of it all shifts a swell with the various blues and greens that suddenly become stark with reds and whites. The Maniac is carving up a lot of people.
And that does kind of dominate the book as he cuts through so many in random but up close and personal ways all while people panic and run, causing even more problems and death. It does all come to a quick resolution once Gina and Zelda can get close enough as Gina is intent on ending this firmly. That’s it captured on video leads to its own follow-up later about it being faked, not the real maniac, and the belief by some that he’s still out there. But we do see how the authorities are shifting quickly from all the fear, attempting to make their careers out of his death and move forward again. There’s some good stuff explored along the way with Gina’s childhood and how this is all impacting her and the connections are laid out well enough without being verbalized.
In Summary:
Kalan brings things to a solid close here while also making sure there are threads to tug on later for more, which I’m certainly agreeable to. It’s not a series that you could say is fun in that kind of fun-enjoyable sense, but it delivered a solid and gripping piece about a serial killer that terrorized a city and its inhabitants significantly for years. It’s hard to know what the reality of it would be but as a piece of fiction it delivers all the right things with character and story. Andrea Mutti helped to elevate it even more with the visual design that gave us great characters and some really wonderful layouts and situational interpretations. Just the material in Yankee Stadium here is gorgeous in its own twisted way. Definitely a solid work that I’d easily come back to for more of in the future.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: March 16th, 2022
MSRP: $4.99