Pretty Deadly

Pretty Deadly: A Penny Dreadful Review

            The Wild West is an excellent setting for a showdown of supernatural proportions. The sweeping landscapes lend themselves well to titanic struggles. The creators of Pretty Deadly, from Image comics, understand this well. I’ve read this comic twice through, and I still haven’t grasped everything that is going on, but the images stick with me, like a stubborn dream. Pretty Deadly is surreal. It’s morbid. It’s gorgeous.

            Death’s daughter roams the land in a tale told by a rabbit skeleton to a butterfly. Death’s agents pursue a young girl and her blind guardian across an epic, sparse desert landscape.

The script by Kelly Sue Deconnick reads like a folk tale. The art by Emma Rios has an eerie, flowing quality. The colors by Jordie Bellaire have an almost sepia tone, giving this strange work a mythological feel, as if the events within are a well-loved tale that happened long ago, when it is in fact only a couple of years old.

            I give this strange and eerie comic four gears out of five. It is beautiful and harsh, and definitely something to seek out.

Your Correspondent From The Bookstore,

Penny J. Merriweather