Witchblade #1 // Review
Writer Margueritte Bennett was in the same airport shuttle car with Marc Silverstri when he asked her to write something for him. She agreed to it. He was, after all, the creator of a comic book she had grown-up reading. He was asking her to write a complete reboot of that old series that debuted in the 1990s. Some time later, Bennett, artist Giuseppe Cafaro and colorist Ari Prianto have delivered the first issue of the new Witchblade series for Top Cow and Image Comics. It’s a fun return to an old character that re-imagines the origin of Police Detective Sara Pezzini and her dive into supernatural darkness.
Detective Pezzini watched as a man’s head was horizontally sliced in half. Blood was everywhere. It was awful, but she might have had mixed feelings about it. That guy DID have her at gunpoint at the time of his sudden demise. She didn’t have much time to think about it, though. The weapon that had sliced the gentleman’s head in half wasted little time in attaching itself to her wrist. Things get a little bit crazy from there. There’s a lot of blood. Some gunfire. Nothing’s going to be the same for her.
The demon weapon from another world returns to make things hellish for a completely different Sara Pezzini than the one who was tossed across page and panel back in late 1995. Bennett draws quite a bit of inspiration from the origin issue of the series that she grew-up with, but she puts her own spin on it with better dialogue and a far more dynamic opening. There seems to be a desire to make this particular version of the story hit with a great deal more force than previous iterations. It’s a reasonably fun approach.
Cafaro has a solid sense of mood and tone as he establishes the setting that will be grounding the beginning of the story. Michael Turner’s artistry in the original #1 had a lot of punch, but they lacked the intensity of the drama that Cafaro is lending to the page in the latest #1. There’s a deeper sense of connection with Sara emotionally as she enters a very dangerous place and gets assaulted by a kind of danger that she had never expected. The moodiness drawn across the face of Det. Pezzini grounds the story emotionally from the outset of a promising new iteration of the premise.
The garish 1990s sexiness of the original #1 can be felt in weird echoes throughout the latest #1, but it firmly establishes a much more dark and aggressive energy than writers David Wohl, Brian Haberlin and Christina Z managed with the original #1. There was far too much of a need to render everything that was going on in the background of the original #1. Bennett wisely focusses the story on its main character and the inexplicable horror the brings her in touch with ancient magic. It’s a stronger overall approach to storytelling that Wohl, Haberlin and Z were playing with back in 1995.
