REVIEW: Her Issue 1; Sea Change

Wingless Comics is part of Wingless Entertainment, a multimedia group, that through creative and engaging sci-fi/fantasy output gives a platform for diversity and inclusivity. Her; Sea Change, issue 1 launched successfully on Kickstarter in late 2022. It is the sixth title in the Wingless stable and builds on the already rich legacy that is being established within the group.

The story is based in modern day California and opens with Her (Safronia) establishing control of elemental forces and moving, under the guidance of her mentor, through a portal to San Francisco. Though her initial actions in the city aren’t shown she appears to have established herself as a known superhero. She is also shown helping at what appears to be a centre for displaced families and children.

These activities however don’t   go down well with some of the local political factions and we see a couple of particularly nasty, xenophobic, political characters who will no doubt feature in coming issues. They are disparaging and distrustful of Safronia.

Next, we are shown a laboratory where seven supernatural type entities are being detained. Though we don’t know the background to this the scientists there are discussing the order they have just received from the head of the lab to terminate these seven characters. Unfortunately for all concerned the entities have escaped the lab and are now at large and have immediately begun possessing several people in a rural community outside San Francisco.

Once they have achieved this the first action of the seven entities is to seek out and confront Safronia and she herself is able to key into the fact that they are now at large and active so that we are clear there is a history in some other past or dimension between Her and the seven Sisters of the Deep Dark.

The story ends well poised with Safronia confronting the Sisters and the action about to kick off.

Book Author:  Malachi Bailey
Publisher: Wingless Comics
Illustrators/Letterers: Dino Agor, Nimesh, Sai Rodriges, Rune Makerz.
Editor Brett Hillisheim

Story                                  4.1
Interior Art                        4.3
Cover Art                            4.5
Dialogue                            4.2
Mechanics                        4.0
Editing                              4.3

Summary

As a first issue of a new title issue one works hard to establish the major players and plot lines in the story. Though we don’t get to see much of the backgrounds of those key players we can through the attitudes they express and the actions they carry out in the story clearly understand what type of character they are and what to expect from them in future issues-  at least what we think to expect from them, I’m sure there’ll be plot twist and character arcs along the way.

The story line is delivered in a taut and suspenseful manner and though as noted different characters and plot lines are introduced in a very clipped way it is clear to the reader how they are all interlinked and that the different strands are going to intertwine as the story plays out.

We see that the protagonist has a number of adversaries lining up against her and will definitely face extensive challenges and conflicts both emotional and physical over the unfolding of the story. The conflict between the superhero and apparent supernatural villains is lining up for round one at the end of the first issue and there is obviously a lot of backstory to unpack from this enmity. 

Though different in tone the unfortunately all too familiar emotional/psychological conflict that the racist politician characters are packing appears it will bring another equally significant conflict to the plot.

As the story introduced different sub-plots/characters we did move around quite a lot, but each new setting was well introduced, and the pacing was on point throughout.

The dialogue is well written and reinforced the characters effectively and the page layout was very well executed with an appropriate use of different types of panel that supported the story line very well.

The line art and colouring showed some lovely work and added a dynamism to the pages. The cover art in particular was very striking and spirited.

Issue 1 Her; Sea Change works really hard to cover the ground for future issues in a tense and intriguing way and the scope and scale of the conflicts it is showing ensure that I will be ready to read more as future issues are published.