This is Artifacts where I will be exploring the Artifacts line of TopCow Productions. This first batch of readings will be dealing with the beginnings of the nascent universe. Starting at the beginning means looking at “Witchblade”, the series that started it all. My reading order for the origins of this line is derived, mostly, from the old “Origin” line TopCow put out for both “Witchblade” and “The Darkness”. However, they are likely out of print at this point – though available digitally. If reading these books in a collected format is what you’d want the ongoing “The Complete Witchblade” line that TopCow is currently producing is likely the best option in terms of price and issues. For this entry I am looking at “Witchblade” # #9-17.
With nearly 10 issues in the second volume of “Witchblade: Origins”, and nearly 18 months of publications, we are starting to see a maturing “Witchblade”. With issue #15 the series wraps up long running background case, who is the microwave killer. Issue #9 provides two firsts for the series. A new art team of penciler in Tony Daniel and inker Kevin Hanna, I’m not sure if they were fill-ins or planned, but they provide a different look at the “Witchblade”/TopCow aesthetic. Michael Turner and D-Tron are the primary line art team for the remainder of issues. Issue #9 also hints at the possibilities of more with the issue reading like a backdoor pilot to the forthcoming “Tales of the Witchblade” series. The following issue expands things in a different direction with the debut of Jackie Estacado, the current host for The Darkness. We’ll be seeing more of him next week. Overall, this collection of issues reads like a more coherent series. The previous volume threw a lot at the reader, literally in the case of all those splash pages, but without much focus that allowed the collection to be a text unto itself. While this collection has three separate storylines/arcs in it they cohere in a fashion that makes for a more enjoyable reading experience.
Also, on a minor credit note, these issues continue to be credited as David Wohl and Christina Z, they are credits as co-plotters with scripting handled by Z solely in this batch.
It was the second page of issue #9 that made me consciously realize that there was a different art team on the book, Tony Daniel, and Kevin Hanna. The volume uses their #9 cover as the main one with Turner’s cover on the credits page, during publication it appears that was the opposite with Daniel and Hanna providing a variant. The second page is a useful example of seeing art teams try to keep within the visual language of an established series but how that language contrast with what it is they do well. From a layout perspective it is keeping in the style of the series, one large anchor image – a tight close up bust of Sara staring down Sal Gallo – with three other panels floating around it. Gallo for his part has been visually minimized in the prior and this page, not even given a full facial reaction just a sort of shocked eye reaction. Everyone is pretty much minimized and anonymized on this page except Sara. In many regards the macro structure of this page is keeping in that 90s image style of having large anchor images and scattered reaction panels around it. In many regards the macro structure of this page is keeping in that 90s image style of having large anchor images and scattered reaction panels around it. This intertextuality should make the page legible to other readers. And yet, it isn’t all that effective. The tight close of Sara is this melodramatic display of power veiled in restraint. To the art teams credit Sara’s eyes are wonderfully sharp and piercing. Everything else around it lacks that dynamism and comes off as flat both emotionally and visibly. Jonathan D. Smith’s coloring attempts to render the dimensions of Sara’s face and clothing in a mostly realistic manner, but they are operating without many lines that cohere the transitions and blending that are going on. Resulting in a face that is a flat impressionist canvas with piercing eyes.
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Tony Daniel and Kevin Hanna’s linework is attempting that Image aesthetic, but weirdly it lacks the excessive, noodling, details that mark the line work of McFarlane, Silvestri, and Turner. This lack makes the art read more like a cartoonish version of that style, where you have these renderings of figures as flat despite some attempts at noodlish dimensions. In particular Jake on the next page has a similar sort of flattened facial despite what reads as the trademark hashing of the era as well as neck muscle definition that is anatomically in correct in so so many ways.
Michael Turner had a certain way of drawing figures with cartooned proportions that would make someone wonder how spines didn’t just break under the excessive weight, or a gentle breeze. We see this sort of design logic in the following issues as the Microwave Killer fries their female victims and Dannette Boucher’s overall look. Which is also why the pinup silhouette of Sara on the same page also reads as off model and like objectifying in a new and different way. Somehow her bust size appears to have grown, and have the most support since Jane Russel’s specialty bra in The Outlaw(1943).* The next several pages work through other Michael Turner page design styles to less effective results.
The contrast in their art styles reminds me of “Suicide Squad” #52 aka Dr. Light Goes to Hell, the normal art team is replaced, and Ostrander-Yale use the new art team to instead enact some Tom and Jerry cartoonish physical comedy to great effect. Except the writing team do not pull of this modification in a satisfying manner.
Once the issue turns into the Anne Bonne story the art begins to function better. Something about the more open space and yet need for floofy clothed detail works better in the pirate setting. The action heavy nature of the sequence also takes away the ability to compose static seeming images as Bonne is constantly leaping, slashing, swimming.
The Anne Bonne flashback is a nice backdoor pilot to what would become “Tales of the Witchblade” a series of miniseries and one shot that highlight prior wielder of the Witchblade throughout history, past and present. A similar set of stories would be used for The Darkness eventually in “Tales of the Darkness” and used to tell the history of the Magdelena in “The Darkness”. By positing that these Artifacts have existed throughout time it afforded the various creative teams a dexterous narrative tool to explore and narrate the “lore” and rules of the various weapons in ways that aren’t just exposition dumps. We’ll be looking at the “Tales of” series for Witchblade and Darkness in entries 6 and 7 of this series.
“Witchblade” #10 further expands things with the introduction of Jackie Estacado, the current host of The Darkness. This issue would come out in November 1996, the next month “The Darkness” #1 would hit stands and people would get another book to buy in this Artifacts line. God, they want him to be so cool. Silvestri and Turner draw him in every single “Cool Guy” action pose you can think of as he does a hit on the local Yakuza. With how the initial run of “The Darkness” goes that “Cool Guy” look is worth holding on to when we begin looking at that series next week.
It’s interesting to see Silvestri and Turner work on the issue together because it shows you the differences in their line work, even if page designs are largely similar. Silvestri’s lines are a plainly more angular and flatter, using hashing to create textures. His figures and pages tend to also be smaller and almost grotesque in the case of Joe Siry. In contrast Turner’s stuff looks more romantic and traditionally idealized.
Running through the background of this series has been the case of the Microwave Killer! Not the most inventive name, but technically speaking Overtkill still exists in the same story space so is it that bad? This serial killer plot has largely been relogated to the C-plot of most issues humming along in the background, going silent when need be or brought up again to justify further plot movement. It provided the series something of a serialized spine for the first nearly year and a half of publication. And in good C-plot fashion it is eventually revealed that the Microwave Killer is connected to Kenneth Irons and the B plot involving Julie and Lisa Buzanis!
Continued belowAfter a break in the case, it is revealed that Ms. Dannette Boucher is the Microwave Killer! Who is also the partner of Kenneth Irons he originally used to experiment on when he discovered the Witchblade. These experimentations involved implanting a piece of the Witchblade into her. The resulting body modification turns the character design into essential Selene from the X-Men line of books. This is also where Turner’s cartooned sense of proportion feels the most naturalized, everything about Boucher is plainly stretched in a sadly not that cartoony or parodic interpretation of a fashion models body.
The interaction between Sara and Dannette provides a useful example of limits of Superheroes as a force for progressive good and the conservative strain of post war American Rugged Individualism Exceptionalism come into conflict. What is on some level a meeting of sisterhood by two different welders, bearers, of the Witchblade quickly devolves into justification of victim blaming, individual, failing instead of a wider more systematic look at how they got here. Which isn’t that surprising it’s the mid-90s after all. The individual failure of Dannette is justified in the apparent failure to control a fraction of the Witchblade, something Sara has increasingly been able to do. I kind of wish the series had more time to spend with Dannette and her perspective and the philosophical ethical vampirism it presents. While she appears to be dead at the end of the issue, she appears in the Sejic cover for “Witchblade” #144 so maybe we’ll see her again.
One aspect that really didn’t age well is the way the art team use framing to further homophobically queer code Dannette. Her villainy, the murders, is linked to her unquenchable appetites. Which turns her into a variant of the Lesbian Vampire type. While there is a predatory framing to her in previous issues, this takes on a plainly obvious sexual undercurrent with Sara that just furthers to Other the character through the threat of queerness. Which is also very 90s. Turner draws her stroking and parading around Sara not sure if she wants to kiss or kill her.
The use of deviant sexuality to connote villainy continues in the final page where it is revealed that Bruce Wilder lives up to his name as he cradles Dannette’s unconscious “beautiful, so serene” body and proclaims her Mother.
Nearly 18 issues in I can see why “Witchblade” managed to hold an audience beyond the obvious. Yes, there is the banal (in that it is lacking in titillation from this writers perspective and well so well-trodden territory – sadly) sexist portrayal of women. But man, there really is something to this supernatural crime book that Christina Z and Wohl are writing. We’re 2-3 years into the 90s comic collapse at this point stupid money marks aren’t propping up everything anymore. It isn’t executed in the way a contemporary supernatural crime book would be, but there is something that has its hook in me. It is on some level the aesthetics, but the storytelling is also pretty good. Even with all the issues I have with it, you could imagine an alternative where those rough spots were sanded down.
All of those rough spots are going to be put in a different light next week when we look at the first ‘Origins’ collection of “The Darkness”.
* Russel herself says she never actually wore the Howard Hawks contraption, but it nevertheless is a museum piece.
