An Unkindness of Ravens #4 // Review
Wilma’s just moved to a very small town. Everyone seems to know her. This is odd as she’s fairly certain that she knows herself well enough to know that they don’t know her. She’s about to find out that what she knows isn’t what she thinks she knows in An Unkindness of Ravens #4. Writer Dan Panosian’s story picks up a bit as certain revelations hit in another issue beautifully drawn by Marianna Ignazzi. The story doesn’t have a hell of a lot going for it that hasn’t been explored pretty extensively in pop horror fiction before, but that doesn’t stop Panosian and Ignazzi from making Wilma seem like a truly fascinating character in her own right.
Wilma might be getting used to the fact that everyone stares at her in the halls of her school. She looks just like a dead girl. She’s going to find it a bit difficult to find a request to visit the principal’s office glowing in magical purple script inside her locker. The principal and her gothy student cohorts are a bit upset with Wilma for going to talk to someone they specifically told her to stay away from last issue. It’s a bit much for Wilma. She returns home a bit early to have a little talk with her dad about their real reasons for moving to the small town she’s come to find herself in.
The usual sort of high school pop horror stuff might feel way too familiar to feel at all interesting, but Wilma is definitely a fun person to hang out with from one cover to the next. Panosian allows her to be totally nonchalant about the fact that magic is real and high school is a really dangerous place, and so on. Rather than panicking about it all the way that a kid might in any other horror story, Wilma asserts herself. She’s driven by everything that she doesn’t know. There’s a lot of anger and frustration in that. It’s a fun dynamic to see a seemingly normal person ensconced in dangerous magic who isn’t at all scared of it.
Ignazzi has begun to find some of Wilma’s deeper appeal. Ignazzi draws firm confidence in Wilma’s face that instantly affirms her place at the center of the story. The beauty in this is the fact that at no point does she look like anything other than a perfectly normal high school student. She’s not given any kind of heroic stature. She’s not rendered with any kind of idealized, heroic framing. Despite this, Ignazzi renders a subtle inner strength in Wilma’s poise and countenance that firmly asserts her as the most interesting character in the series.
The mystery of the series reaches a kind of an intense turning point this issue. The path that the series takes from here could fall in a direction that might feel quite silly. Depending on how Panosian and Ignazzi handle the next couple of issues, the series’s strengths could really land in the panel center. Wilma’s reaction to what’s going on and the world’s response to her reaction could guide things in a really appealing direction moving forward. An Unkindness of Ravens #4 does a really outstanding delivering that dramatic turning point in the series’ plot.
