Pretty Deadly, Vol. 1: The Shrike

A woman written, drawn, & focused book without losing any strength of character, but rather elevating it!

The visuals are so powerful in this book & the shape-shifting is beautifully portrayed.

I appreciate that this is a Western that gives the spotlight to the female characters, but doesn't make it corny or forceful. It's also a book that caters to any reader, regardless of gender.

Perfect for someone who has a vivid imagination & an enjoyment for metaphorical works.

Stunning visuals. This is my first venture into comics and it might not have been the safest choice (given that this series "breaks" several comic book "rules"), I still enjoyed it nonetheless.

I dig all of the color use throughout the novel, especially the warm tones and colors contrasting with the cool tones and colors. It gives the story a sense of depth and a factor if coolness that regular surface-level writing just doesn't achieve.

With Pretty Deadly, the devil is also in the details. Many small details hidden within the intricate art tell their own stories in any given panel. One case in which this happens is when heavy rainfall is coming down on Sissy and Fox while Fox retells his story of sparing Sissy after her birth at the fetid river. As Sissy draws the details of the story onto a banner with a paper brush, the falling rain washes away some of the ink and color, which is reflected in the panel the reader sees. Such cool details like these allow the story and environment to become alive and help immerse the reader that much more.

This is suffered a bit from what many Image books do - DeConnick has grand, epic ambitions for this book (in the proper Homeric sense of the word, I expect), and that requires a fair amount of setup, which is what we get here. As with many Image books, I expect that the action will really kick up with the next volume.

As set up goes, though, this is pretty fantastic. DeConnick draws from a lot of old mythology - Hades and Persephone, and Coyote, and other tales, and wraps them in a beautifully depicted weird west tale. It's sexy, it's dangerous - Pretty Deadly was the perfect title for this work.

mmm... I feel like... this was good, but I didn't really care about it that much...? Like... I guess normally what I love about KSD's stuff is how character-driven it is, and since these characters are mostly Western/mythology/whatever archetypes, there wasn't a lot for me to grab onto. The art is beautiful, though, and there are also some beautiful turns of phrase, but ultimately not my cup of tea?

I think it would also benefit from re-reading, but I'm not sure I care enough to re-read it.

But if you like this kind of thing, this is probably a thing that you would like.