From the pile of random unread comics. I'm guessing I got this because it was free.
Title: Strange Girl: Free Ashcan Edition
Date: August, 2006
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Nick Stakal, Eric Nguyen, Jerome Opena, Harper Jaten
Standard comic format here. "Free Ashcan Edition" just indicates a small page count (10 total; five of story and five sketchbook pages), and the fact that it's a giveaway.
The story portion is a first-person recap of the action from issues 1-9 of the Strange Girl series, as told by the title character Bethany Black. Essentially, a Christian-flavored apocalypse has occurred, with much of the population raptured away by God, while Earth is given over to the demons, who get right down to the business of enslaving, torturing, and killing those "left behind".
Bethany, discovering she has a talent for demon magic, survives by making herself useful to one of the demon lords before eventually escaping and striking out on her own.
Unfortunately, all of that is told in a wordy recap that really doesn't do the job of selling the product that it needs to. Show, don't tell, please! Bethany's voice is uninteresting, and she never quite manages to convince me that I should care about her or her world. I guess I need more of a hook than just "Hell on Earth".
The artwork looks good, but the small panels don't help matters. The emergence of the demons from cracks in the earth during the apocalypse really needed to be epic-sized. Space limitations really hurt matters here.
In fact, the best thing in this book was the sketchbook section, in which artist Nick Stakal was allowed a bit of breathing room while showing off concept art for his run, which starts with the 10th issue of the series.
That's not enough to convince me to jump on board with this story, though.
Rating: 4.5/10
Title: Strange Girl: Free Ashcan EditionDate: August, 2006
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Nick Stakal, Eric Nguyen, Jerome Opena, Harper Jaten
Standard comic format here. "Free Ashcan Edition" just indicates a small page count (10 total; five of story and five sketchbook pages), and the fact that it's a giveaway.
The story portion is a first-person recap of the action from issues 1-9 of the Strange Girl series, as told by the title character Bethany Black. Essentially, a Christian-flavored apocalypse has occurred, with much of the population raptured away by God, while Earth is given over to the demons, who get right down to the business of enslaving, torturing, and killing those "left behind".
Bethany, discovering she has a talent for demon magic, survives by making herself useful to one of the demon lords before eventually escaping and striking out on her own.
Unfortunately, all of that is told in a wordy recap that really doesn't do the job of selling the product that it needs to. Show, don't tell, please! Bethany's voice is uninteresting, and she never quite manages to convince me that I should care about her or her world. I guess I need more of a hook than just "Hell on Earth".
The artwork looks good, but the small panels don't help matters. The emergence of the demons from cracks in the earth during the apocalypse really needed to be epic-sized. Space limitations really hurt matters here.
In fact, the best thing in this book was the sketchbook section, in which artist Nick Stakal was allowed a bit of breathing room while showing off concept art for his run, which starts with the 10th issue of the series.
That's not enough to convince me to jump on board with this story, though.
Rating: 4.5/10
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