Pretty Deadly Volume 1: The Shrike

The art is as messy as the storytelling, which is as messy as its muddle of genres, and in less capable hands it would be a mess, but this is a dazzling and strange and delightful whirl of myth and fantsy about the daughter of Death and the hunt for her, and for the little girl who may replace death in some ineffable cycle, all as told by a dead rabbit to a butterfly. Story and art do not hold back from the weirdness but jumps right in and trusts the reader to immerse themselves in the story and the art and the idea that it all makes a kind of sense. There's nothing quite like it out there.

I wanted to really really love this book. I wanted to be swept away. I am a great fan of DeConnick's writing elsewhere and was eager to see what she could do outside the superhero genre. But I read it through and I was... flummoxed. I had trouble with recognizing characters, couldn't keep up with the shifting storylines... I flipped back and forth but just couldn't work it out. I walked away, perplexed, not understanding how so many people with similar tastes as mine could love this book so hard while I found it confusing and highly derivative. Was there something wrong with me?

A month or so later, as I was getting ready to write this review, I picked it up again and started to flip through it, and ended up reading the whole thing show more again. And really liking it. There are still a couple of panels I can't figure out no matter how much I try, but I worked my way around them. The art is fantastic, but in places style seemed to win out over comprehension. Which is fair enough, if that's your choice. I have a feeling at least one of the mystery panels will be explained later.

So, everyone says this is Sandman meets Preacher, but with chicks. There's some truth to that, but doesn't that sounds like a book worth reading? The litmus test may be: Are you interested in a story told by an animated robot skeleton to a butterfly?

I'm along for the ride after all. Awaiting the next volume. show less

Silly me. I thought this was a western. It's not, although it is set in what looks like the American West sometime in the past, during the frontier years. But what it really is is a fairy tale, told to a butterfly by a rabbit, a story about life and death, about hell and some other things, and it's utterly fascinating. An old man and a young girl are traveling with a band of gunmen, telling a story as a carnival style performance for whatever people wish to pay. But the story is true and only a portion of what actually transpired. It's that story and the story of how the man and child became traveling companions that forms the heart of the tale. DeConnick has crafted a realm worth spending time in and Rios's art is perfectly suited for show more this gritty myth in the making. I'm looking forward to more. show less

Yee-hee haw (sung to the tune of "Oh Death")

Life ain't ours to keep, girl. We get to hold some for a little bit, but then we got to pass it on.

What happens when Death gets his heart broken? The world goes to rot, of course. Say what you will about the guy (or gal); Death keeps the cycle of life spinning 'round and 'round. He is a gift, not a curse - for "it's the dying that makes the living matter."

And when Death stops doing his job - stops tending the Garden that is the soul of the world - well, it's time for retirement. But what if the old bugger doesn't want to go quietly? That's the story at the heart of Pretty Deadly, Volume 1: The Shrike. And man, is it a doozy.

My love for this comic book? I can't even begin to count the ways. show more The artwork is breathtaking; the colors, rich and moody and evocative; the story, enthralling and epic in scope. While it takes a little while for the puzzle pieces to come together (it happens midway through Issue #4), once the plot clarifies, it is legend.

The story is vaguely reminiscent of Stephen King's The Dark Tower (and the stylized violence has me mentally courting Quentin Tarantino to direct the film adaptation), but featuring a cast jam packed with kickass ladies: Death's daughter, Ginny, who rides on the wind to mete out vengeance on the blade of her sword; Death's enforcer Big Alice, she of butterflies and badassery; little Sissy, the adorably creepy girl in the vulture cloak; Beauty, the tragic maiden imprisoned in the mythic tower; and gunslinger Sarah, whose tears called forth the savior of humanity.

Love, death (and Death with a capital D), grief, loss, betrayal, redemption: Pretty Deadly has it all. One part western, two parts grim fantasy, it's sure to appeal to fans of multiple genres. There's also a breadth of diversity in the cast: in addition to the many, varied Strong Female Characters, there are a number of people of color, including Death (and presumably his daughter Ginny, though she's light-skinned like her mother); Sissy; and Sarah and her six sons (we meet two, but only Cyrus is named). And did I mention that Fox is blind?

While the story arc presented in Volume 1 is resolved - resulting in a story that's complete and satisfying, almost as though it's a standalone - Volume 2 promises the return of "Deathface Ginny." I, for one, cannot flipping wait.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2015/03/18/pretty-deadly-volume-1-by-kelly-sue-deconni... show less

Fox and Sissy are storytellers, travelling from town to town telling the story of Beauty, Mason, Death and Ginny. Deathface Ginny is the Reaper of Vengeance and you only need to sing her song to call her violent assistance to you. At one town, little Sissy takes a slip of paper from Johnny Coyote who takes a feather from her vulture cape. This kick-starts the action as several parties start to look for Sissy and Fox.
Pretty Deadly is a beautiful fable of Death’s Domain and power over earth, and that which will take his place. Emma Rios’ art work is light and expressive, which combined with Jordie Bellaire’s colors make me want to print out whole pages and make them into posters. The story is dark and bloody, inspiring a comparison show more to Pan’s Labyrinth, a fairy tale horror film. I really can’t recommend this book and this series enough. show less

I got this through NetGalley caught first purely by the cover. This is a creepy brutal western about Death…This is a fascinating and graphic story blending the western and mythology into a surreal tale of retribution. Visually it reminds me of Vaughn’s Saga but the story brings to mind Gaiman’s Sandman crossed with Ennis’ Preacher in a strange new myth involving Death personified and the Old West. I'm particularly interested in the strong group of female characters. I’m very curious to see where this goes next.

I must confess that I obtained this book almost solely because it was written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, and at this point I am pretty much willing to at least take a look at anything she writes. Pretty Deadly not only met the high expectations I have for work from DeConnick, it exceeded them. This is, quite bluntly, mythic storytelling that manages to be both epic in scale and simultaneously intensely personal. Told via a combination of tight and brilliant writing from DeConnick and stunningly beautiful and evocative artwork from Emma Rios, this story presents a violent and visceral enigma shrouded in mystery wrapped up in magic, gunfights, and swordplay.

There is a long tradition of Westerns mixing in mythic elements - from Stephen show more King's Dark Tower series and the movie Purgatory to more subtle examples such as High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider. Pretty Deadly draws upon this tradition and mixes in a helping of folklore that seems inspired, at least in part, by both the tall tales of the Old West and Native American mythology. This melange results in a story that reminds one of a variety of other stories, but isn't exactly like any of them. This seems to be a recurring pattern in Pretty Deadly: Some of the characters are reminiscent of archetypes from either traditional mythology or various familiar Westerns, but none of them exactly fit those molds. The mythic elements presented tend to remind one of a variety of stories from myth and folklore, but none of them are exactly the same as anything found in those sources. In the end, DeConnick and Rios have managed to create a story that is essentially new, but still feels familiar.

Set in no particular location other than "the Old West", at no particular time other than "when revolvers were the height of firearm technology", Pretty Deadly is a mythic Western that mixes folklore-influenced fairy-tale themes with the kind of grim and gritty gunslinger-mystique found in movies like Unforgiven or programs like Deadwood. The tale follows Sissy, the girl in the Vulture Cloak, and Fox, a blind man who can see, as they are set up by a man named Johnny Coyote and have to flee from both Death's servant Big Alice and Death's daughter Deathface Ginny. The story is part revenge tale, part love story, and part apocalypse, all mixed together into a delicious stew that seems impossible and by all normal logic should be entirely nonviable, and yet fits together so perfectly that the result is sublime in its excellence.

Given that Death is a major character in the story, it is almost inevitable that comparisons with Neil Gaiman's Sandman series will be made, and while they are not entirely unwarranted and Pretty Deadly stacks up favorably to the tales of Dream, DeConnick and Rios definitely carve their own path with this book. Where Sandman is often subtle, focusing on intrigue and trickery, Pretty Deadly is often starkly brutal. The characters in this book are generally direct - even their attempts at deception are generally about as subtle are a slug to the gut or a sword thrust through the skull. Violence and death pervade the story: As minor a detail as the framing device used to set up the action, featuring a butterfly telling the story as an oral fable to a bunny, opens with a moment of sudden violence, prompting the bunny to make the understatement of the year when it tells the butterfly that it was afraid of a human girl only "for a moment".

Despite this pervasive brutality, the story is still full of mystery, in large part because many of the characters don't actually know what is going on, and as a result, the reader shares their confusion. Adding to the chaos, several of the characters have something to hide, and only grudgingly give out the information they possess. This atmosphere also reinforces the underlying theme of the story, that something is fundamentally wrong with the world itself, and because this was the result of the actions of one of the characters in the book, it is up to the characters in the book to set things to rights. The whole book is drenched in an aura of chaos and uncertainty, which one might think would be a detriment, but instead propels it forward, as the mystery pushes the reader from page to page to uncover the next tidbit of lore that has been hiding, in some cases in plain sight. What makes this so very delicious is that every time one question is answered, that answer both seems completely natural and also poses yet more questions at the same time.

As good as it is, the story itself is not the only thing makes this book so good. Instead, the way the story is told elevates it beyond the merely ordinary. One problem some graphic stories have is that they try to explain everything that is going on, seemingly ignoring the fact that the story is being told with a visual medium. DeConnick does not fall into this trap, providing the reader with extremely spare text and allowing the beautiful and arresting artwork provided by Emma Rios to carry much of the story-telling load. This is not to say that DeConnick's text falls down on the job, but rather that the text serves to complement the art rather than dominate it. There are many graphic novels that struggle to find the balance between text and artwork, but in Pretty Deadly, DeConnick and Rios have achieved it in a way that they make seem almost effortless.

Full of eerie atmosphere and a folklore-themed story, The Shrike is an excellent beginning to the Pretty Deadly series. One oddity is that although Deathface Ginny is ostensibly the main character of the story (with the title being something of a play on words that references her directly), and the background folktale that underpins the action in the book is essentially about her origin, the book's contents feel much more like an ensemble piece, with Ginny being an important character, but just one among many. The story is, however, an excellent ensemble piece: A love story gone wrong that leads to another love story gone wrong that leads to a love story gone right, with violence, death, and obsession running through it all and everything presented with terse but brilliant prose accompanied by beautiful and evocative artwork.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less