Pretty Deadly #1 – Review

By: Kelly Sue DeConnick (story), Emma Rios (art), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: Float like a butterfly, explode like a bunny.

The Review: I would like to make it clear that even though I’m a professed supporter of female creators in the comics biz, I didn’t pick up Pretty Deadly on that basis alone, or even primarily on that basis.  Truth be told, I’ve had a hankering for a western series ever since I dropped All-Star Western, and this title fits the bill, especially since it had a very reputable creative team attached.  The fact that they were all women was merely a pleasant bonus.

Right off the bat, DeConnick evokes a distinctive and appealing tone for the series, dry and dusty, but simultaneously overcast and chilling.  This is the frontier at its coldest.  DeConnick de-emphasizes the frantic, cowboys ‘n’ injuns side of the western genre and instead brings out its earthy starkness, its complacency about life and death.  The characters move and interact under a near constant state of wariness, their emotions always ready to transition to fight or flight.

With that, the issue is engaging, but serves more as a prologue than a true introduction to the series’ lead and her mission.  Deathface Ginny doesn’t even appear until the last page, by which point we have learned little about her other than her strange, wondrous birth, the product of a tragic, doomed love affair between a woman wronged and Death himself.  We get a general summation of her work (“If you done been wronged, say her name, sing this song…”), but she herself remains an elusive figure, whose connection to the story at hand isn’t altogether clear.

Instead, DeConnick focuses on Foxy and Sissy, a grizzled old man and his young traveling companion, whose own purposes remain unclear.  Though they masquerade as mere troubadours, proclaiming Deathface Ginny’s tale, you can tell just by their eccentric appearances that there’s more to them than that.  No one ever really mentions that there’s something supernatural going on (aside from the legend of Ginny, of course), and you don’t see overt signs of it here, but there are hints of something otherworldly in the air: blind men with perfect aim, papers that glow green when burned, animals that speak to each other beyond death.

Speaking of which, while I give due credit to DeConnick for taking risks with her storytelling choices, the use of a dead bunny recounting the events of the issue to a butterfly seems odd for oddness’ sake.  For this issue in particular, this framing device does nothing that the narrative itself doesn’t already do very well by itself.  You’ll be happily reading along, enjoying yourself, and suddenly the voices of the butterfly and bunny will pop in again, doing little to help the story along and more often begging questions that distract.  How could the bunny know anything if it’s already dead?  Why’s the butterfly so curious anyway?  And why bunnies and butterflies?

DeConnick’s script is solid, but what makes the issue a standout is Rios’ lovely, swooping style of lines, which seems sensitive to the unseen, but clearly felt, desert winds that scour the landscape of Pretty Deadly.  Just like DeConnick, Rios has greater success at conveying a certain tone than anything else.  Whether it’s the cold and bare landscapes of the wild frontier or the cold and bare outposts of human settlement which punctuate the land, Rios captures their sharp outlines with a strange, paradoxical fragility, as if at any moment they could be swept away by an unexpected destructive force.  Bellaire’s pale colors give just enough weight to Rios’ flat artwork, and by limiting each page to a narrow palette of complementary colors, she sets the time and setting more effectively than the script or art does alone.

Conclusion: A slow start that doesn’t thoroughly convince you that you have a winner in your hands, but does get you invested in its self-assured uniqueness.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – So what do you guys think?  Did Alice shoot Johnny in the ass or someplace more delicate?  He does afterward say she might as well finish him off, so…