An Unkindness of Ravens #5 // Review
Wilma is understandably a bit confused. Her mother died in a car accident a long time ago. Now she’s sitting down to a conversation with her. Things will get to be a bit confusing for her as things progress into the fifth issue of An Unkindness of Ravens. Writer Dan Panosian continues to expand the mystery of Wilma, and her new home of Crab’s Eye in another chapter brought to the page with the requisite sense of mystery by Marianna Ignazzi. A comfortable kind of supernatural drama gracefully flies through the pages of another satisfying trip to a small town.
Wilma just woke-up; she doesn’t remember actually sliding into bed last night. And now there’s someone who has come to see her: her late mother. Usually, this might be a bit of a shock. Wilma’s been through a lot since she came to Crab’s Eye four issues ago. Meeting her very real mother isn’t really as much of a shock as it might have been at the beginning of last year, but it’s still a shock, and there IS so much to learn. And there’s going to be a bit more of a surprise in store for her at issue’s end.
Panosian’s dialogue becomes the center of the story this issue. Wilma discovers things about herself from her mother as the readers come to learn things about the rest of the world from the supporting ensemble. An installment like this could be very, very tedious on the comics page, but Panosian keeps it interesting with dialogue that is both explicit and ambiguous. There are quite a few different ways in which to read Wilma’s mother’s dialogue that could lend themselves to vastly different perspectives on the story, which is relatively rare for the comic book format.
Big and heavy dialogue balloons might normally weigh down a comics page, but Ignazzi cleverly shifts them across the page in a visual style that really has no business working as well as it does. There are some incredibly daring choices here. Wilma’s mother goes into a long expository monologue in a conversation in a gazebo, and Ignazzi casually shoots the action to the roof of that gazebo for an entire page. The mood is brilliant, but it takes a hell of a lot of guts to turn a dramatic monologue away from the person who is talking. There are some stunning visuals here, too...of particular note is a panel featuring a police line-up of the millennial witches known as the Ravens. It’s so simple it’s almost hypnotic, but Ignazzi captures a remarkable dramatic depth with just one panel.
Ambiguity in and of itself isn’t necessarily scary or intriguing. Still, Panosian and Ignazzi play with a shadowy lack of definition that allows the comics page to feel a bit more like deep paragraphs of a long and winding young adult novel in an enjoyable fifth issue. There’s still a great deal of potential in the series as Wilma explores the deeper aspects of local culture and her connection to it. Still, the real danger in a story like this is keeping it interesting without plunging the narrative into a hopelessly convoluted narrative in the issues to come.
