A review by neuroqueer
Witchblood by Jim Campbell, Lisa Sterle, Matthew Erman, Gab Contreras

adventurous fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Quick takeaways:
Protagonist(s): “Quirky” witch
Antagonist(s): “Quirky” vampire
Plot: Save the world
Overall: C+

Thoughts:
Plot idea: Hero who doesn’t want to save the world is forced to save the world. Not an unusual plot idea in media.

Plot idea for this book: Quirky witch who is actually super powerful doesn’t want to save the world is forced to save the world from quirky cowboy vampire who wants to be a God. Interesting spin on that but I could not get into it.

The art is nice. The original artist worked on the modern witch tarot deck which is a nice looking deck so I knew what art I was going to see here. There are some really unique character designs here.

I liked the explanation of the origin of vampires and witches.

Off the bat though, I did not like the hero Yonna. I started the book not liking her and ended the book not really changing my opinion.

I’m not sure why though?

Maybe it’s because I disliked that she caused problems and never really owned up to them.

Maybe it’s because she came across as ungrateful.

Maybe it’s because she felt quirky for the sake of feeling quirky? And even then it was not quirky enough.

Maybe it’s because in situations like these, the hero not wanting to be involved usually is justified for some reason. Didn’t feel that way for Yonna. Leads do not have to be goody two-shoes and want to save everyone because of their chaotic good alignment. It’s actually more interesting if there is some hesitance about jumping into perilous situations while being morally ambiguous. I just don’t think it was executed well here.

The other characters looked nice but they weren’t especially interesting. I pretty much forgot most of their names already.

It also didn’t help that the story felt very rushed. I’m guessing the creators only had X amount of issues to get the story done. I think if it was expanded to more than 10ish issues it would have been better.

Overall, I see the potential but I just didn’t gel with it.