Such A Fun Book! And "New Reader-Friendly" To Boot!
I picked up this OGN on a whim, and I absolutely love it. Its pretty much perfect. Dini's putting in some top-notch storytelling here. Despite jumping around multiple time periods, the story flows at a perfect pace. Each flashback serves a purpose and fleshes out the relationship between our leads. Speaking of our fleshed out leads, Black Canary and Zatanna both feel like real fleshed out people. Too often with "buddy cop" style team ups (and especially when its two women), the characters get plugged into a specific role for the whole story; The smart one and the dumb one, the serious, stoic type and and the silly goofball, the girly-girl and the tomboy, etc. but "Bloodspell" avoids that cliche and actually gives us two multifaceted human beings for leads. Dini definitely isn't telling a story with stock characters here, and that really gets you invested in these characters and their adventure.
As far as the art goes, its not my favorite kind of style but it matches the tone of the story very well and is more than technically sound. I think what I like the most is that Mr. Quinones manages keep our fighting females looking feminine without going down the "sexed up" route. For instance, Black Canary's still a looker, but she actually looks thick/muscular enough to pack as much punch as she's supposed to. When she's launching into an attack, you still she her curves, but she isn't twisted into positions that explicitly shove them in the reader's face. Bonus points to Quinones for consistently drawing Canary and Zatanna with different bodytypes that are appropriate for their individual characters, rather than giving them both the generic "thin and slightly toned" look.
Worth noting is how accessible I feel this story is. The opening pages give you everything you need to know about our two leads, and, though the story has plenty of cameos (mostly in the flashbacks), you never feel like you're missing something. Not knowing who The Key or the Female Furies are won't be a detriment to the reading experience. I'd totally recommend passing this graphic novel along to people who are interested in superheroes but don't know much about comics.
