By: Viktor Kalvachev (design, art & colors), Patrick Baggatta, Jim Sink & Kalvachev (writers) & Philo Northrup (producer)
The Story: An amnesiac seductress/hit-woman learns the truth about her past.
What’s Good: This is one of those properties where outstanding artistic design makes it work. And, it is also evidence that many artistic tools can work when they are used by a skillful artist who applies a sense of style to their work.
The overall look and style of the book is B&W with splashes of color here and there. Sometimes the only thing colored in a panel may be a woman’s red lips and the lipstick mark she has left on the wine glass, in other panels, the entire panel may be hit with a smear of yellow to accentuate a mood that Kalvachev wants to convey. The point is that it is very effective use of color because he is using color to emphasize and to direct your eyes to the things he wants you to look at in a panel. I wish more sequential art was colored in this fashion because it shows infinite more care and sensibility than merely painting a woman’s dress orange in every panel and then rendering the hell out of that orange dress to approximate body contours. That is boring…. this kind of coloring is stunning and eye-grabbing.
In terms of the art style itself, I’m pretty sure that Kalvachev is using a decent amount of reference material because everything in his panels looks so real. “Photo reference” gets a bad name because people think it implies “tracing”, but it can also simply be used to make sure that the stuff in your comic looks real. And that realism is important when you’re telling a story like Pherone that is supposedly set in a modern reality. It helps us sink into the story when the cars, guns, animals and people all look real. I think with realism, you need to be all-the-way-in if you’re going to try it and Kalvachev excels at that with this work.
Now, let’s talk about Kalvachev’s main character Eve. Although she is sexy as hell, she maintains that sense of realism. Her character design is very dynamic and I’m amazed and how much energy and emotion she has in each panel (think Kalvachev really does a nice job on the eyes). In fact, there was one panel towards the end where Eve looks a little wooden and it stuck out like a sore thumb because in the preceding hundreds of panels she was just rippling with energy and sensuality. I can’t tell you how important that energy is because with a story of “woman assassin” everything is riding on the central character. If she seems sympathetic and lively, the story works. If she seems cross and stiff, the story is going to bomb badly.
The story is fine and engaging, but really isn’t the star attraction (Eve is, the story is just a reason for Eve to exist). Even if you’ve read a ton of “woman assassin with sketchy memory” stories, you’ll enjoy this because of how great a character Eve is. And even if the themes are things you’ve seen before, you still don’t know how it’ll play out.
As for the hardcover itself, it is a very nice package. Pherone was originally published in pieces, some as demos and some in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. Let this be further encouragement to read Heavy Metal! The hardcover seems to be the same trim size as Heavy Metal (i.e. slightly larger than a standard comic) and includes some nice deleted scenes and concept art in the back. The cover is pretty hot too as it shows Eve and she’s depicted with some of those vinyl (I think) overlays such that some parts of her outfit are more reflective than others.
What’s Not So Good: I really don’t have many negatives about this work. The only one I can personally point to is that I’d like more. It seems like this is a pretty personal work for Kalvachev, so I’m sure he’d like to do more if people are buying the work.
The only other complaints that people will come up with for this are going to stem from narrow mindedness due to the “female assassin” story (which they might feel they’ve seen before) and the photo reference (which some people treat as a lesser form of art). I usually say that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but in this case those objections are just wrong because the execution of those concepts and techniques in this work is so strong.
Conclusion: A great hardcover with an engaging story and some outstanding design and visuals. Definitely recommended.
Grade: A
– Dean Stell
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