Gargoyles #7. // Review
Dominique Destine arrives home and settles into the evening. She’s taking off a few things and getting more comfortable. She’s taking off her human form, too. She’s not really Dominique. She’s Demona. She’s not really human. She’s the central title character in Gargoyles #7. Writer Greg Weisman continues his “Here In Manhattan” story to its seventh chapter. Artist George Kambadais brings the story to the page with colorists Giulia Giacomino and Giovanna La Pietra. Things are looking kind of grim for the gargoyles as Demona works her magic. The action and drama move briskly across the page in a quick-paced issue.
Demona’s watching the news, but she’s also watching the world. Broadway and Lexington are up against a swarm of cybots that had been created by Halcyon Renard. He’d designed them to be non-lethal, but they’re being really aggressive. Get him with them enough times, and they might just end up being something other than lethal. Meanwhile, Goliath is still in police custody. There’s a lawyer who is helping him out, but there’s some level of mystery about THAT as it’s uncertain exactly who might be paying the bill. And then there’s Demona. She’s gotten ahold of some pretty powerful magical artifacts. Things seem to be going her way...
Weisman keeps the action moving through a series of different scenes that alternate pretty quickly. The pacing is actually really well executed. It's too bad that Demona isn't given a bit more depth. The character just comes across as a weak and shallow kind of evil. The character has a lot more potential than that, but she isn’t given a whole lot of room for depth as she opens and closes the issue watching the rest of the ensemble do their thing. The drama between Goliath and his lawyer is kind of an interesting one that shows a degree of intriguing dramatic depth.
Kambadais’s art is remarkably true to the style and form of the original animated series. Giacomino and La Pietra’s colors seem more perfectly suited to the style of color found in the mid-1990s animation. Backgrounds have a bit more of a grainy texture, which suits the look and feel of a comic book a little better than what would have been featured in the animation. There's a tight economy about the action sequences that manages to get across the general feel of a supernatural combat without scrolling across the page and taking up too much space. Weisman is on a very tight schedule and needs to have plenty of space for some well-executed dramatic moments with Goliath as well.
Given enough time, Weisman will have to give Demona a little more dramatic depth. She’s clearly a very formidable antagonist, but she IS somewhere near the center of the conflict, and she’s going to need to show something of a sophisticated motivation behind what she’s doing for the “Here In Manhattan” story to have a solid weight as it reaches its climax.
