By: Caitlin Kittredge (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eve de la Cruz (colors)
The Story: It’s about time someone made these woods safe for witchcraft again.
The Review: In my creative writing days at undergrad, I had a professor who taught us how every character, setting, object, and detail in a story becomes part of that story’s “inventory.” Once you create it, it remains in existence for the writer to call upon later. It’s a great tip for getting yourself out of fictional dead ends, but it also explains the craft behind the greatest stories. Knowing and using one’s inventory is what gives a story its cohesion and flow.
Mysteries probably rely on their inventories more than almost any other genre of fiction. You know that thrill you get from a (good) mystery, when the solution arises from a host of seemingly inconsequential details established early on? That’s making good use of inventory. In contrast, Kittredge simply writes in whatever solution she needs, on the spot, to get to where she needs to go next.
Case in point: Eve suddenly strides into the police station, grabs a flask from evidence, and drinks its contents, having it on good authority (i.e., Dani) that this is the only way to confront the evil in the forest. A) I don’t believe we ever saw that flask before. B) We never saw Nate or Wilcox pick it up. C) At no point did Kittredge ever establish that galathine potion was inside. D) Nor was it ever clear that Dani’s stepdad used the stuff for any reason, much less “safely travel the woods, to see past what’s twisting them into nightmares.” This isn’t good deductive writing; this is creating solutions out of whole cloth.
But perhaps this has something to do with Kittredge’s inexperience with the comic book medium. This opening arc has seen Kittredge neglecting the building blocks of the plot as she focuses on the at-times trivial tensions among the characters. In books, you can afford to let the plot slide for a while as you explore relationships and personalities, but monthly comics demand that you always be thinking of the action at hand. Instead of all that emphasis on Eve, Nate, and Mel’s torrid love triangle—which we all got by #2 anyway—Kittredge would have had more success concentrating on the supernatural CSI aspects of Coffin Hill.
At the very least, Kittredge should have done more to develop this creature which has “tied itself to Coffin Hill like a virus.” In the end, its nature and origins are still poorly understood, though it explains itself as the source of the Coffin witches’ power, which Eve apparently “unmoored” herself from when she summoned it years earlier. If I understand it correctly, the creature then expected a “Harvest,” but got nothing—hence its vengeance on Eve. For all that demonic rage, it takes one good stab and bullet to banish the creature, making the conclusion of this arc quite nearly as disappointing as the rest of it.
There’s little sense of victory here, too, although one threat to Coffin Hill has been rid of (for now). Eve comments, “I don’t know where it went. All I know is that I’m still here. And I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than being dead.” Not really all that inspiring, but then again, Kittredge tends to write in clichés than for any specific purpose. A good example would be Eve’s mom assuring her, “You’re a Coffin witch, Eve. Losing isn’t in our blood,” despite the fact that just a line or two earlier, her mother admitted, “I gave in [to the creature]. I took what it offered.”
It would not be far from the truth that Miranda’s art is the one distinguishing factor to this series. This issue is a particularly strong one for him, with sharper, more expressive faces than the glazed perfection he usually gives characters. The horror scenes are especially strong. The moment when you see splotches of darkness escaping from the gaping mouth of Mel’s naked, gutted body is pretty disturbing, and about the only reason you feel any suspense from this whole affair at all.
Conclusion: Having given the series a fair shake, I can’t say that it’s done anything to prove that it’s more than a far less interesting, far more tawdry Buffy or Charmed. Dropped.
Grade: C+
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – I love how at one point, Wilcox just gives up trying to pretend she has any authority or presence and lets Eve walk in, grubbing at evidence. She’s an inspiration to cops everywhere.
Grade
Conclusion