Witchblade #9 // Review
Two people are pointing guns at each other in theBronx Zoo. They’re both reasonably well-dressed and they’re both dealing with a hell of a lot at the moment. One of the two of them introduces herself as Detective Pezzini of the NYPD. The other one is a bit relieved. He was concerned that she might have been an angry ex of his. He’s about to find out how wrong he is in Witchblade #9. Writer Marguerite Bennett continues her re-boot of the beloved supernatural superhero with artist Giuseppe Cafaro and colorist Arif Prianto. The action continues on a reasonably well-balanced look at the life of Detective Pezzini.
There are shadows lurking around the gentleman in question. They’re snakes that are hissing and whispering angry things about the “witch” that has come to be in her presence. She can’t really see them. If you want to see shadows, though...you’re going to have to turn-up the light. That’s exactly what Pezzini does with her built-in weapon. The thing is: the guy is talking like he doesn’t see the snakes that are encircling him. He’s in a bit of a strange situation that he’s suffering from. That’s going to make things a bit more complicated.
Bennett does some remarkable things with Detective Pezzini’s internal monologue that all feel like they’re rendering the nature of the Witchblade on a level that hasn’t really been explored all that well before. Bennett gets inside the head of someone afflicted with this sort of weapon on a very clever level that feels well-integrated with what she is. Her personal understanding of the world around her is already beginning to become a fusion between police detective thought and some kind of dark superhero stuff. It’s a very clever fusion that Bennett is working with. One of the best ever treatments of the WItchblade.
Cafaro brakes, apart the action and the drama in ways that do remarkable things for the overall flow of the story. Action and drama moving in different directions. There is a towering intensity to the tension in the drama. It seems to be flowing through just about every panel. The action when it slams, slices and bites into the pages is really very well executed. There's a moral complexity to what's going on. It also feels very well present on the page. Thanks to some very clever and cleverly atmospheric visuals that are amplified by Prianto’s brilliantly moody colors.
Bennett is doing a remarkable job of bringing a character into a moral sophisticated sort of a storytelling style that embraces both the magic and the street level crime that really could have been a much bigger focus of the original series. It's fascinating to see where she's going with it and specifically how she paces and breaks up a single issue into various and that all seem to be amplifying each other between her personal and private life and her professional and mystic life. It’s a very sharply-defined balance.
