Sweetie Candy Vigilante #6 // Review
The sweetest vigilante in New York is having a big holiday party and everyone’s invited. The guest list includes a great many people who one might think of as being well...fictitious. That’s not going to stop them from showing-up for the hottest holiday party on the East Coast in Sweetie Candy Vigilante #6. It’s going to be a hell of a journey for everyone involved as the backstory between a young, hot St. Nick and Sweetie is revealed. Writer Suzanne Cafiero and artist Thiago Vale explore the world of Sweetie for the holidays in a fun, little holiday adventure.
Flaming Carrot arrives pretty early in the issue for his own cameo. So clearly Sweetie’s party is going to be at least marginally weird. Of course...Sweetie hasn’t always had the best history with the holidays. She had been involved with Santa when he was a young guy with a red beard and a rock and roll sort of an attitude. Meanwhile there’s the whole matter of Red Riding Hood, Great Pumpkin and quite a few others showing-up to hang out for a few pages this holiday season. Everyone has a slightly heavier and more stylish edge than one might expect out of beloved holiday characters...but that’s exactly what one might expect from Sweetie.
It’s nice to see Flaming Carrot show-up again...even if it’s only for a brief and suitably strange cameo. Cariero keeps the weirdness coming throughout the issue while maintaining the central conflict at the heart of the issue. There’s a great sense of fun that is maintained throughout the issue. This is quite a accomplishment given how many different characters are showing up around the edges of the party. It be really difficult dynamics going on between fairies characters. Very some of them are going to be annoying, but you would expect that from any holiday party. The important thing is that the central story is maintained, even if it's not necessarily all that interesting. It does provide some insight into the background character and that's what's important.
Vale has some sense of design fresh novel visuals for characters that have been around forever. It feels perfectly new and fresh even though everything that's going on is alarmingly familiar. It's not looking to corrupt any of the traditional images of any of the characters in question. Just make them look a little bit different and a little bit edgier. And it manages to do big crowd shots feel warm and cozy where they could feel cluttered and unengaging. It's quite an accomplishment.
It would be nice to have this issue expand into perhaps more of a series. Just like any holiday party with the people you really like. There's so much going on around the edges. Nice to spend more time with individual characters. The action moves along pretty quickly throughout the issue. And there certainly does seem to be enough time with every character for given the length of the issue. But it would be really nice to have more time for more. Should have all the different subplots going on. A full length team up between.Sweetie and Flaming Carrot would be a lot of fun too.
