Damsels #6 Review


With the sixth issue here, has the narrative found form or started to lose its magical spark?  Read on to find out.

The official description from Dynamite:

From the tales of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and Snow White comes Damsels!

As Rapa, Red, Talia and Heinrich journey through the Enchanted Forest toward Villeneuve, Rapa’s memories begin to return in earnest. The royal cavalcade is ambushed on the road to the kingdom, forcing Queens Talia and Rapunzel to fight for their lives. Meanwhile Queen Belle, plagued by her conscience begins to wonder if she herself might be cursed.

It’s been a fairly popular thing to take classic fairy tales and attempt to modernize or even re-imagine them, but in most of those endeavors lost in their shuffling is what made those stories compelling in the first place.  Thankfully this creative team is paying attention to that aspect.

The two authors steering the ship of this burgeoning franchise, Leah Moore and John Reppion, do an excellent job taking their lead characters and slowly moving them along a path toward discovery.  In this latest outing the script offers up some exceptional dialogue that only suffers from a few moments that seemed to be far too corny.  But with that said this creative duo covers a good deal of ground while attempting to keep this rather complicated and at times convoluted saga accessible.  The end result is another solid entry that’s slowly but surely coming into its own skin.

Aneke once again tackles the art and continues to offer up some impressive visualizations of this fantastical world.  From classic story book characters to the locales they inhabit, each proverbial panel is illustrated by some expertly placed line work.  The pencil strokes contained here inform the narrative and despite some minor moments where facial reactions seem a tad bit off what’s on display goes a long way in selling the credibility of this jaunt.

Damsels #6 still has some growing pains to fight through but this series has certainly begun to find its footing, I honestly can’t wait to read the next outing. Recommended,

3.5/5

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