Wish fulfillment is a heck of a thing. One minute you’re looking into the mirror and dreaming of a better life. The next, you’re making Faustian bargains with a wolpertinger (think “fanged Jackalope”) on the other side of the mirror. This is the world Delilah S. Dawson brings to us in her return to comics. This review contains spoilers.
Written by Delilah S. Dawson
Illustrated by Matias Basla
Lettered by Jim Campbell
Teen Victorian fairy fight club! As the illegitimate daughter of a Naval Captain, Artemesia has never fit in with her father’s family, nor the high-class world to which they belong. However, when she is targeted by the Faerie Queen and pulled into another realm, she has no choice but to try and save the world that has always hated her. Writer Delilah S. Dawson (Hellboy: An Assortment of Horror, Star Wars: Forces of Destiny) and artist Matias Basla (The Claw and Fang) present a beautiful, gripping tale perfect for fans of Labyrinth and Princeless.
Artemisia was always an outcast. Lady Grey, her father’s wife, never let her forget where she came from or the color of her skin. She was even forced to serve one of her half-sisters as a maid. When tragedy strikes, they demand that she make an even greater sacrifice. Then things get weird.
Dawson named Artemesia for Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and wilderness. It’s an apt name, even though she’s modeled after Dido Elizabeth Belle, a slave girl brought back to England by her father in the late 1700s. When the story begins, we see her natural affinity for nature. She rides the older horse, Traveler, across the family estate to visit her younger sister, Caroline, who has sworn off horses. She promises the younger stallion, Diablo, that she’ll ride “a real horse” one day. When she wakes in Faerie, she is curious, and not afraid until the murderous Unseelie fairy arrives. But she recovers and embraces the hunt with a glee that is both enthralling and a little unsettling.
Matias Basla handles all the interior art in “Sparrowhawk,” and his style is a perfect fit for this story. His palette creates compelling atmospheres for both the English countryside and the land of Faerie. Color and detail fill his backgrounds grabbing the eye as they add bits of nuance and substance to the story. Lush fields carpet the Northumberland countryside, broken up with canopies of trees and grazing sheep. A bouquet of flowers in Caroline’s hands frames Artemesia’s face. Even the family cemetery where the young ladies meet is bursting with life. Elizabeth’s headstone fills the foreground as it provides context to their conversation.
Basla’s layouts tell the story alongside the background, too. Artemesia walks straight across the dining room on the wall on her way to meet Lady Grey, munching a piece of bread after sassing the cook. Family portraits cover the wall of the manor, but there’s no portrait of Artemesia of course. The dining room is well-furnished, and Basla frames the shot of the young lady climbing the stairs with a long view that conveys how large the house is. When Artemesia enters the room to talk to Lady Grey, she crosses her arms and leans forward as reaches the door. She doesn’t want to be there.
The story’s natural halfway point is when the Faerie Queen grabs Artemesia, hurls her into Faerie land, and takes her place. It starts with a tight closeup of a ghostly white hand reaching through the mirror. It grabs Artemesia’s wrist, not unlike how Lady Grey did earlier, and continues on a double-page spread. Northumberland and the manor’s earth tones give way to white and blue. Artemesia falls away from us, into a tunnel to Faerie. The Queen takes the girl’s shape and tells us her plans in panels that encircle Artemesia’s fall.
In Faerie, the backgrounds teem with life. There’s a dark blue cast to everything that’s almost a negative image to Northumberland. The vegetation is wild and has a menacing aspect, reminiscent of the Faerie Queen’s antlers. Crispin, the wolpertinger, embodies the inherent contradictions of Faerie. At first glance, he’s an adorable Pokémon. After a closer look, you start memorizing escape routes.
Continued belowCampbell imbues the creatures from Faerie with some extra personality. They all speak in a smaller, mixed-case font different from the human’s. Their speech balloons are polygons, rather than rounded. Each character has a different color font, with the Queen’s a red that makes her stand out from the rest, even from the white-on-black Unseelie.
Artemesia is outraged at Lady Grey’s demand and only gives in when she threatens Caroline. The exchange with Lady Grey cuts directly into racism and classism. Artemesia wasn’t just mistreated because she was evidence of her father’s unfaithfulness, it was also (or perhaps only) because of the color of her skin. She could never join society looking like that. But when the Lady needs a warm body to marry off, Artemesia is good enough. It’s as close to being sold into slavery as one can be in England in the 1850s.
Artemesia has a degree of agency. She does decide to protect her younger sister. She refuses Crispin’s first offer of help and negotiates what she believes is a better deal. When she witnesses a fairy kill an innocent, she immediately springs into action. But she’s not immune from bad decisions. She accepts Crispin’s second offer too quickly, and we get a big hint about what she gave up when she casually removes a flower from her head. Is her sacrifice related to the savagery she displays when she finally defeats the fairy? Is her transformation more than physical?
Final Verdict: 9.0 – “Sparrowhawk” comes out of the gate firing on all cylinders. Eye-grabbing covers, compelling script, and gorgeous interiors. This is a must-read mini-series.
