Jen Bartel

Well that sucked.

The Art

The art was good…sometimes. Usually, it was painfully awkward and had that certain quality so common in Western comics and graphic novels: what I call “rushed by a deft hand.” The artist was good, undeniably so, but they were also very clearly rushed, or just didn’t care about their art enough to make it look any good.

The spectacle shots were all beautiful but the regular panels and character designs looked just really strange, at least in my opinion. Facial show more expressions didn’t match logical emotions for the scene, physical stances often looked uncomfortable, and character designs themselves didn’t really give any insight into the characters themselves (which was weird because clothing choice was kind of a theme in this). Essentially, think bad animation from the 90s, but with a 2020 makeover.

Pretty color palette, though. I’ll give ’em that.

The Story

I don’t know what I expected when I heard “neo-noir fantasy,” but whatever it was, this wasn’t it. I guess its comparison to Riverdale is accurate though, because this was flashy, overly dramatic, and made absolutely no sense.

The world could have been really cool, but instead it was generic. There were some really cool elements, but they were mostly background and when they did come into play, I had literally no idea what was happening. The magic system was very poorly explained.

The entire conflict of the story was so beyond convoluted, and so drenched in spoilers that I can’t even complain about what I hated without telling you the entire plot. So I’ll just give you this gif to explain the plot:



The MC is the dumbest Mary Sue I’ve ever encountered. She hears a lot of evidence that the people she trusts are actually 1) not who she thinks they are, 2) lying about everything, and 3) not looking out for her best interests. And yet she still trusts them?? And forgets about all the information she knows about them because ~their aura was telling the truth~? And to make it worse, she knows that her spooky cat only speaks in lies and then when it’s telling her that she failed, she gets all angry?? He’s saying you succeeded, you idiot! But the thing is, she did fail so I really don’t get any of it.

The writing was also really cringey. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this was actually written by an AI that was fed only Wattpad stories and then edited by a sleep-deprived human. It was all around not good.

Also, would a logical transition kill you, Sam Humphries? Because scenes changed like that *snaps* and I never knew where I was, how much time had passed, and what was going on.

TL;DR & Conclusion

This had the potential to be really good but instead it’s just…really not. If it wasn’t for the insufferable MC and the mediocre art and the dreadful plot and generic yet confusing world, I might have liked it. But I didn’t. I will not be continuing this series. show less

The plot in this one runs a bit fast, but I was so distracted by Jen Bartel’s art that I didn’t care. Magic and an angry heroine and secrets... loved it.

This was an interesting take on the magical girl genre. I'm so here for secret badass magical girl fight clubs. I really hope there's going to be more of these eventually.

Blackbird is about Nina, a woman who swears she saw a beast when she was younger. Her whole life, her family made fun of her and called her crazy. As an adult, she learns that she was right all along. Things she thought she knew, turn out to be lies.

This was a really cool concept. Essentially there are paragons. They are basically magicians/wizards with lots of money. They are in secretive cabals which seem a little cult like but unfortunately cabals were not explored as deeply as I would show more have liked. The magic system is connected to beautiful gems that each have a different spell inside. It seemed like the gems were hard to get but this was also not explained very deeply.

Things I loved: the art, the colors were incredible, magical atmosphere, the settings, Nina is beautiful, the gem magic system, this surprised me

Things I didn’t love: not enough development (yes, this is a comic so it makes sense to keep things brief, however, there were so many panels that felt unnecessary when I really just wanted to learn more about the world (mainly the cabals and magic)

While this isn’t a new favorite, I can see promise. I’m hoping that another volume will be released so I can learn more about this version of Hollywood. show less