Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery

Agnes Quill is a sixteen-year-old orphan who uses her special ability to see ghosts to solve mysteries in the Victorian-esque city of Legerdemain. This book contains four different short stories dealing with Agnes's various cases, and involves spirits who won't move on, a monster in the sewers, a horde of zombies, a mad scientist, an underground society, and other strange things. Each story is written by Dave Roman but illustrated by a different artist. It's a great idea, and I really like the setting. However, it's somewhat strangely executed. We're given little to no background on Agnes or her past, or who any of the recurring secondary characters are... but after all the comics, there's a written section a bunch of character profiles show more and selections from Agnes's journal. It's a weird way to organize things. I also was only so-so on the artwork for the stories. Raina Telgemeier's artwork I loved, as I was expecting to, but hers was the shortest piece. The piece that was drawn by Roman himself had a similar style, though, so that was nice. The other two were very detailed and lifelike, with a heavy use of blacks, which tends to come across as too busy for my tastes. So, in general, I loved the concept, and would happily read more about Agnes, but this collection didn't entirely work for me. 3.5 out of 5 stars. show less

I liked the idea of having a different illustrator for each story, doing so gave a unique flavor to each chapter. While the illustrations were wonderful (particularly the ones by Jason Ho and Jeff Zornow)the stories themselves were a bit choppy and underdeveloped; they would have been better if each was its own graphic novel, as opposed to a short story. My favorite part of the anthology was actually the field guide at the end, since it explored the main character and her world in more detail.

A strange graphic novel that follows a girl who can see ghosts and how she solves mysteries for them. The graphics weren't too great, but the plot was interesting.

I liked the first story best, although I preferred the art style of the second.