I feel as though I should get out and explore the local businesses in this town more often. Been here over six years, and still lots of restaurants and whatnot I haven't tried. Haven't even bothered to get a library card. On the other hand, I could just lay around in my apartment and review the first issues of two mini-series.
At some point the gods descended from their plane to live in the mortal world. Not as mortals, just among them. The Greeks and the Norse at minimum. As this is set in the '80s, it means Zeus dresses like he's starring in Miami Vice and getting annoyed at Apollo for selling watered-down Ambrosia to mortals as a drug. Incidentally, Loki's pitching the same idea to Odin, although the Norse gods are a biker gang.
Casper, who dresses more like someone John Wick would kill, is Zeus's errand boy, a mortal granted certain gifts. He's out on the balcony while Zeus dresses down Apollo, but then a mysterious figure with a spear shows up and impales Zeus, blasting Casper into the river. He survives, and the remaining pantheon doesn't kill him, but he is kicked out of the club, so to speak.
Lots of questions, lots of possible hints and clues scattered about. Athena mentions not all the gods have made it to Earth, with Apollo's sister (I'm assuming Aphrodite, but who knows with the way the Greek gods fucked around) specifically mentioned. Which raises the question in my mind of whether there are gods sneaking around the others don't know about. Ares' is apparently a big weapons dealer. The possibility of conflict over the Norse also making a version of their sacred drink for the mortals.
A lot of pages with just 2-4 panels, meaning a lot of large panels that span the entire page and half its height. I thought maybe it was meant to suggest the gods' power and presence. That even these large spaces can't contain them, but outside a few examples, there's usually lots of space in those panels. Ponciano also tends to draw Casper so we're looking at his back, and when we're not, he's usually looking at the ground. We don't know much of anything about Casper yet, so maybe that's by design. The gods are dismissing him, making him seem irrelevant, but he's the one to watch.
Patsy's back in her hometown, and she's a suspect in the murder of a guy she met a month ago at one of Hedy's parties. Patsy was at the scene, her gloves are covered in blood, the body, which we see in panels shaded entirely in red, was badly mangled. Patsy's also living in her childhood home, which is haunted by her mother. And Patsy's self-medicating with booze and pills. She returns to the scene of the crime and finds Sleepwalker's badge. She visits Rick Sheridan in a psychiatric hospital and he explains Sleepwalker is suspended because he's a suspect in Patsy's boyfriend's murder. Because Rick's in love with Patsy.
Well, shit Rick, why didn't you do us all a favor and kill Tony Stark when she was engaged to him?
In a vacuum, the strange murder mystery aspect of this is cool. And teaming up Hellcat and Sleepwalker, neither exactly a mage or sorcerer, but each sort of mystic-adjacent, also potentially cool. But man, do I feel like I'm missing a lot of pages. Not just that Patsy and Rick are apparently old pals. Patsy mentions that "something" has been messing up her psychic abilities for months, so she can't read minds.
When the hell could she read minds? Sense magic, sure. That's been a thing since at least when she came back from the dead, and I think it's how she found the badge.
This Patsy seems so defeated. Even more than when she returned from the dead and found it difficult to care about anything because she was certain she'd just end up there again. Even then, she put up a cheerful front and pushed on out of sheer irritation she was mixed up in a war over the various Hells. Now, even when she was supposedly so happy with this guy, Spalding Grantham, what a name, still with the booze and pills. Maybe Cantwell figures it's a more realistic reaction to the crap she's been through, but it just looks odd from this angle.
That said, I like Lins and Diaz' combined artwork. Lins brings rough, kind of squishy texture to the art when Patsy's in costume that makes her look wilder and a little broken. Like Stuart Immonen, but a little busier, bit sketchier look. It goes away when we see her with Spalding (jeez, that name). Linework is more solid, character faces are less cluttered, less hatch marks. Everything's a little simpler.
Diaz colors those scenes in more moderate tones. Or less contrast. The ones set in the present, Patsy's in a squad car with blurred lights coming through the windows, or bright blood clashing with the dark blue of her gloves. Or she's in interrogation, with some unpleasant yellow light making everything look sick. The flashbacks are more pleasant, no jarring combinations. Almost too good to believe, one might say.
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