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ALISON DARE AND THE HEART OF THE MAIDEN #1
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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Oni Press
Writer: J. Torres
Artist: J. Bone
Additional inks: Darwyn Cooke
Editor: James Lucas Jones
Price: $2.95 US/$4.50 CAN |
I've read all of the various Alison Dare comics published by Oni Press thus far, and I think this one has to be my favorite to date. Torres blends a sense of mystery and adventure with refreshing innocence, as always, but this mystery is a bit more engrossing than what we've seen before. Bone also captures that innocence with what one might initially expect to be a mutually exclusive gothic atmosphere.
Alison and her friends, Dot and Wendy, sneak out of their dorm room at St. Joan's Academy for Girls and stumble unto some mysterious goings-on on campus that apparently involve the nuns that serve as the school's faculty. The next morning, though, the girls remember nothing, but are once again drawn into the intrigue at school thanks to some odd behavior and events.
Bone's simple style really brings out of the youth of the title character and her friends, but surprisingly, he also brings a remarkable level of detail to bear when it comes to conveying the setting to the reader. One really gets a sense of the intricate archietecture of the school and the secret places it conceals. He also captures its gothic nature but without the usual corresponding inky shadows. Speaking of inky, the ninja sequence told almost completely in black with white lines was stunning. The art in this issue stands out as some of Bone's best work to date.
Torres has developed an interesting mystery-within-a-mystery motif here. The three girls are faced with odd mystery of why they have such a strong sense of deja vu all the time and half-remembered bits of information floating around in their heads. The reader knows the answer already, but the mystery of exactly what's going on at the academy remains up in the air, so we can still identify with the protagonists.
I think one of the reasons Alison Dare and her friends are so appealing is that they represent a nice balance of childhood. They're good, bright kids, but they're also wilful... but not to the point of being bratty. They act out of curiosity and fun, and it enables them to experience the adventures the rest of us only imagined of as children.
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