When I Feel The Snakebite Enter My Veins
The Good: The art's really nice, especially for the setting. The coloring especially has a good smoothness to it, and the effects of the multicolored lights are well illustrated as well.
The entire issue is very well paced. It's presented as a mystery, with a few key players, and you're not sure yet which one you're supposed to be following. There's that girl who's on all the issue covers, but we know nothing about her, she's stirpping on stage, the top girl in the club. There's a man and woman talking. Government agents. They gives us all the dialogue without sounding like exposition or giving away too much. They're after Voodoo? The dancer? Who is she? Still following the agents. They're the main characters? Getting information. Ok I think I went on a weird tangent there, but the point is, the style of storytelling here is very interesting and engaging. We know next to nothing about the main character, but in a way that works. It's clear that this lack of knowledge is part of the story, and doesn't hamper the issue's level of new reader accessibility. Hell, I'M completely new to this character and I'm hooked in the mystery. We don't even know if the main character is good or evil.
We do get a great feel for the 2 government agents and the dynamic between them, and they appear to be key players in this story.
What really got me was the scene at the end when SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.
The incredible level of subtlety in the artwork for that scene really captured me and drew me into the story in the critical final moments of the issue, thus heavily influencing my desire to continue the series.
The Bad: While I could justify the levels of sex in Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws, I can't completely say the same here. It's part of the setting, yes, but they go just a little too far. They try to straddle the line like Catwoman did, using the slow erotic tease of a sensual artistic stripping, but they keep going. I have to admire the pacing for it, imitating a real striptease, but there's definitely a bit too much of it just for the sake of it.
As much as I appreciate the subtle lack of info, I feel like we could've used just a bit more. We're hit with a ton of possibilities on Voodoo's origins, but we get nothing confirmed, just A LOT of options, which is a bit overwhelming. I don't feel like I'm being given the chance to hypothesize and choose my own possibility to support until the truth is revealed, I feel more overwhelmed by the multiple choice quiz I've been given.
In Conclusion: 4/5
This was a great mystery with some great pacing, and a bit too much fanservice. But don't let that turn you off of this comic, because the mystery is definitely intuitive and engaging. The pacing is subtle in a lot of good ways, and I'm really interested to see how this turns out.
