CLODAGH #1, available from Blue Fox Comics now on Kickstarter, tells the tale of a murderous witch with an ax to grind. When the titular character settles into peaceful, village life, the witch’s arrival throws everything into chaos.
The Details
- Written By: Simon Birks
- Art By: Willi Roberts
- Letters By: Rob Jones
- Cover Art By: Willi Roberts
- Cover Price: $4.14 (estimated for digital pdf)
- Release Date: Ships from Kickstarter in April, 2021 (estimated)
Was It Good?
The art is good. The main monster/villain is intimidating and dangerous in all the right ways. However, the story has a few rough spots we’ll cover below.
Overall, it’s a decent first outing for an original story.
What’s It About?
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
The prologue begins with a man calling for help in a dark jail cell. The location and timeframe are not highlighted, but based on the clothing, it’s pre-colonial Europe, maybe.
The prisoner’s captain responds from outside the cell door that he’s escaped and is here to rescue the prisoner. When the cell door opens, standing there is a hideous, hag-like witch wearing tattered rags and holding the captain’s head. The prisoner begs for his life, and the witch states the only thing she wants is the location of a man named Fillin.
The opening scene is very effective in quickly establishing the main threat and the villains goal. It would have helped to provide some context for clarity’s sake (Where are they? Who is this prisoner? How did they get here?), but the bare minimum of setup gets the job done.
Cut to a small village during a wedding ceremony. Fillin is present as an attendee with his daughter, Aine, and his girlfriend (wife?), Clodagh. After the ceremony, Aine playfully pleads to go with Clodagh into the woods for hunting practice. When the practice is complete and the time draws near to attend the wedding reception, Fillin is apprehensive about going. The villagers are apparently not fond of Clodagh.
Fillin and Clodagh’s conversation sets up a nice bit of character development establishing Clodagh as confident, thick-skinned, and worldly in the ways of people. What’s not clear, and is never explained in this first issue, is the source of the village’s resentment towards Clodagh. The story would have benefited from a quick explanation.
The newlyweds enjoy a private, romantic dance before making their grand entrance to the reception guests. Suddenly, the witch enters the private area of the tent where the couple is dancing. The groom warns the witch to stay away, but she ignores the warning and decapitates the groom with an ax.
The biggest rough spot in this issue is this scene because of the way it’s presented. A couple is dancing in a private area of a large tent with a large crowd on the other side of the curtain. A witch holding an ax openly announces herself to the couple when she enters.
The natural reaction for the couple would be to scream or run. Make a loud noise. Do something. Anything. All they had to do was step through the curtain and they would have had the protection of numbers on their side. Their reaction to the witch doesn’t make any sense for how a human would react when confronted with a scary monster.
Fillin, Clodagh, and Aine are walking back to the village when they see a column of smoke, implying a fire. Fillin sprints ahead to investigate, leaving Clodagh and Aine alone on the path.
Suddenly, the witch appears by Clodagh and Aine with “hypnotized” villagers. She demands Clodagh hand over Aine. The villagers blankly repeat the demand as if mind-controlled.
In this scene, the reactions make sense but the logistics don’t. From the prologue, it’s established the witch wants Fillin. The witch and the thralled villagers are coming from the village while Fillin is running towards the village on the same path. If the witch wants Fillin, they would have crossed paths before encountering Clodagh and Aine, so the time to kill or capture Fillin was on the path. Why avoid the path or hide from Fillin just to take his daughter when Fillin is the target?
The villagers knock Clodagh out and take Aine. When Clodagh wakes up later in the village, the minister tells her Aine is gone and Fillin left to get her back. Clodagh admonishes Fillin for being foolish because he’s falling into the witches trap. It’s unclear how Clodagh knows what the witch wants or that it’s a trap.
We conclude with a night scene in the woods. Fillin is trying to keep warm holding a single torch. He dozes but is awakened by sounds coming from the surrounding woods. He at first thinks it’s wolves, but then a large giant steps forward from the treeline. When he asks “what is that?”, his talking dog says “I don’t know.”
Yes, Fillin is accompanied by a talking dog. Looking back through the issue, the dog is not present anywhere else except for this bizarrely random appearance on the last page.
There’s a good story here, but there are some significant flaws. Also, the title of the issue is ‘Clodagh’, but all the weird, interesting things are centered around Fillin who gets the least amount of character development. The issue could benefit from giving Fillin more interaction to get what he’s about, but as it is, the narrative is disorienting in a way that generates more frustration than curiosity.
Final Thoughts
CLODAGH #1, available from Blue Fox Comics now on Kickstarter, begins a tale of witches, grudges, murder, and… talking dogs. Despite the structural flaws of the plot, the art is excellent, and there’s enough uniqueness about the story to keep going to the next issue and get some much-needed answers.
Score: 6.5/10
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