[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Artist: Riley Rossmo
Summary
What will you be remembered for? Have you made an impact on the world? Valentine Richards wanted to be a writer, a great novelist! One day, when she was in fourth grade, she won a writing contest. She was published in the local news paper, got a trophy, it was the best high of her life!
Since then she has continued trying to write, she’s working with a publisher, but usually as a ghostwriter for autobiographies. When we meet her she is unceremoniously having a smoke on the toilet, underwear around her ankles and on the phone with her publisher.
She is told that she will once again be ghostwriting, this time from Antonio Luna, a man who has literally zero impact on the internet. Yet, he is the greatest man who ever lived!!
Upon arrival to his large, gothic mansion, which he built by hand, she is greeted by his butler and maid. His house is filled with trophies, oversized paintings, bells, and other baubles. When Valentine first meets him, he is laying in bed, IV in his arm, and barking orders. He’s ready to tell his tale to the world with Valentine’s help, if he can survive the mummified assassins lurking in the room first!
Positives
This is the single craziest opening issue to a series that I have ever seen. I find Valentine to be somehow the most relatable person I’ve read in a long time. Maybe its her unabashed behaviour, but by making her so open to the reader, we immediately know her personally.
Rossmo’s art is fantastic and is a wonderful coupling with the bold and outlandish Antonio Luna. Artistically the art does a great job of bringing us into Antonio’s world. He is a large, broad shouldered mountain of a man with white hair. In comparison, Valentine is a short, chubby woman with big puffy hair. They couldn’t be more opposite, both in behaviour, and appearance. This contradiction though is what lets us relate from real-life, to typical-person Valentine, to the bizarre Antonio.
Negatives
There are no negatives worth mentioning in this issue.
Verdict
As a first issue, this hits the ground running like no issue has before. We are subject to super personal and real moments, blood, gore, even some nudity! I can’t wait to see how Valentine’s book comes as she hears the tales of Antonio Luna.
