Review: HOUSE OF WHISPERS #10
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writers: Nalo Hopkinson and Dan Watters
Artist: Dominike “DOMO” Stanton and Nelson Blake II
Colors: John Rauch
Letters: Deron Bennett
Reviewer: Tony Farina
Summary
This month in the House of Whispers, Erzulie and Ananse are having an argument. You can tell from the images below, how that is going. However, just because Ananse is a trickster, it does not mean that Erzulie is a shrinking violet. Boy does she have a plan. The best part is, it involves more story telling. And so, stories are told. Which stories you ask? Well, you will have to read to find out.
Meanwhile, stranded in the mouth of an acid-belching wyvern, Maggie, LaToya and Cheri are in big trouble as you could guess with the whole acid-belching wyvern thing. Luckily, Maggie is pretty smart and Cheri is pretty resourceful and there are some things that can take down a wyvern.
In the final act, the Corinthian and Uncle Monday hatch a plan.
Positives
The cool part of the technique of story telling being used this week is that we don’t know what is real and what is a story and neither do the characters. It adds a fun layer to the life or death story, which, in general are not fun.
House of Whispers has a special guest artist this month to help out with the story telling. Well, the story telling within the story telling. Because each month the art is what keeps people coming back to House of Whispers, this new wrinkle is just a joy. check out a sample of Nelson Blake II’s work here:
Domo is bringing his A game like always and the juxtaposition between the two art styles fits this narrative very well because we are not supposed to know what is real and what is story. By mixing it up between Stanton and Nelson, the team shines.
Negatives
However, the team fails to shine in sticking with a narrative. Once again, this House of Whispers falls victim to too much plot and not enough character development. Cheri seems interesting. Maggie is still the best of everyone in this book. LaToya is growing, and then… cut to, something else.
Verdict
Seriously, the best thing that House of Whispers could do is spend time with one story each month and then, make the switch to the next story in the final pages. Go with that for a month, end with a cliff hanger. We can handle it. I just feel constantly distracted. Characters matter. There are some good ones here, but because we don’t really get to know them, we don’t care much about the mortal danger and without that, this book just falls flat.
