Advance Review: Charm City #1
From Scout Comics
Coming next week from Scout Comics is a new mini-series - Charm City - and I had a chance for an advance review.
The Baltimore police are baffled when a Ravens cheerleader is found floating in the Inner Harbor with an arcane symbol carved onto her corpse. And only Alyssia Singer, music blogger at the Baltimore Sun, knows what it means: that a serial killer is targeting Baltimore's underground witching community. Alyssia-an excommunicated witch who no longer uses magic-must decide: take the case and confront her estranged family and long buried demons... or risk more bodies piling up...
Author: Josh Eiserike
Artist: Scott Van Domelen
Kicking off this new series, and it works as a fantastic introduction. Combining characters, the world and, of course, the crimes.
We get some good moments as we are brought into this world behind our own. One with magic, and someone is picking off the witches. A sign is left at the crime scenes, and the police have no clue.
This brings in Alyssia, who is no longer part of that magic world and is trying to make her own way in the ‘normal’ world. Nevertheless, she is brought into it, and the way this plays out is well done and drops her right into it.
We get a good build of the characters we meet, and there is the reasoning behind Alyssia leaving the magic behind in the background. We don’t get all the answers yet, but using the backup story is interesting and gives us something extra to the story.
The murders are interesting, and the fact that it is against magic users but has an impact on the non-magical police force makes this an interesting point. How will these two worlds cross over?
This initial issue sets everything up well and gives us a good mix of all the aspects we need for the story, with some magic action, violence and excellent writing of the characters.
The artwork plays well with the mundane aspects of what we know, combining it well with the magic and some good colouring within. The crime scenes are well done, explaining what we know has happened.
This is an excellent start and one to keep a watch on.
