SEEING RED #1 – An Honest Review

SEEING RED #1, available from Evoluzione Publishing on IndieGoGo, follows a group of demon hunters roaming the land to protect villagers, but things get complicated when one of the team breaks their most sacred rule.

The Details

• Written By: Marcel Dupree
• Art By: Mannix Francisco
• Colors By:Fahriza Kamputra
• Letters By: Marco Della Verde
• Cover Art By: $5.00 (pdf)
• Release Date: February 2, 2021

Was It Good?

Yes. The art is excellent. Character designs, costumes, action, coloring, and lettering are all top-tier. This is a gorgeous book.

The writing is good, but the primary downside of this first issue is that it feels rushed. The opening sequence, in particular, need either one or two pages, or at least a few more panels, to make it make sense. You get the impression the creators were trying to get from A to B very quickly and skipped a few steps along the way.

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When you’re introducing a brand new world with its own set of rules and characters, you can reveal each character with breadcrumbs that unfold as the issues progress, but you can’t skip the action steps that inform the reader what’s going on.

Overall, the rushed narrative isn’t a showstopper, but it hurt an otherwise gorgeous book.

What’s It About?

[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]

We begging with a village in flames. villagers are running, crying, and screaming. A father desperately calls out to his daughter in the chaos. When he finally spots her through the smoke and flames, they run to embrace each other. Suddenly the father is torn in half by an insect-like demon.

So far, this book looks great. The tension from the chaos is palpable, and the coloring is bold. Even the panel layouts are visually interesting.

Before the demon can kill the girl, the demon is doused in flames from off-panel. We see an eclectic group on horseback, each wearing unique costumes and carrying an assortment of weapons. One member of the group is holding the Dark Ages equivalent of a flamethrower.

After the demon has been thoroughly destroyed, the group’s leader, Mazos, approaches what looks like the village’s elder so they can talk about what happened.

The transition here is where we see those gaps mentioned above. Besides the elder and this arrived group, nobody is around, the villagers have all disappeared, their huts are no longer on fire, and all is calm. We go from pandemonium to a quiet visit on one page.

Seated around a fire in the elder’s hut, the elder admits he summoned the demon. The local warriors would not protest the village, so the elder called the demon as a last resort to protect the village. Ella, one of the hunters, is incensed over the admission and storms off to find the raiders who attacked the village.

“Wait! What? What raiders?” you ask. That’s another gap in the story. The way it’s drawn and written, there’s no hint or suggestion that raiders attacked the village. It comes across as the demon was the one who created all the mayhem. The opening needed something more. It needed to show raiders attacking the village. It needed to show the elder conjuring the demon as a defense, and then it needed to show the demon either indiscriminately killing both raiders and villagers randomly or something that makes the sequence make sense.

Admittedly, this would have made the book longer, but seeing the elder’s shock when he realizes he can’t control the demon would have made his admission more pitiful and Ella’s righteous anger more relatable. On its own, the elder’s admission and Ella’s reaction come out of nowhere.

Ella tracks down the raiders to the next village where she mercilessly starts killing every raider she can. What’s also not clear here is the purpose of the raiders. Are they looking for something? Food? Money? Simply setting up a random group of raiders that go from town to town simply to destroy it doesn’t make sense.

These may seem like minor quibbles, but it’s the difference between a story where things happen and a story where things happen that are meaningful, that gets the readers excited or happy or sad or mad. Readers invest in the story when they feel something.

Mazos arrives to stop Ella before she gets killed and to turn her in to the Kulling council. This group of hunters is part of an organization of demon hunters called the Kulling, and one of their cardinal rules forbids killing other humans. Ella has broken their law and Mazos, as much as he’s saddened for her as his adopted daughter, must bring her in.

For all the critiques over rushing or skipping steps, the deep relationship between Mazos and Ella comes across very well. There’s a genuine bond between them, and you can see the conflicted emotions they both feel over what Ella has done and what will happen after Ella is turned in.

We conclude the issue with Mazos and Ella standing before the Kulling council to receive judgment.

How Does It End?

Ella is sentenced for her “crime.” Mazos does what any good father would do. The Kulling council changes its mind… for the worse.

Final Thoughts

SEEING RED #1 creates a new world over raiders and hunters where the actions of men and women can be just as deadly as the demons they hunt. The art is stellar in every panel, and the writing sets up a unique story, albeit a bit rushed.

Score: 8/10