By Keigen Rea — I want to start this Karmen #1 review with something that should have been present in this comic itself: Content Warning: Suicide. Self Harm.

So, here’s my overarching reaction: <rubbing temples> What the fuck. Is this.

To be perfectly honest, Karmen #1 isn’t a comic I really expected to read or review. I’d heard about it, read a little bit of Guillem March’s art here and there, so when King Zack (editor’s note: that’s me and I do not like that name/characterization but what are you going to do?) DMed about it, I went “Okay, hell yeah haha,” knowing it was vaguely erotic. I then dove right into it. And yeah, it was, in fact, vaguely erotic, but it also had the main character commit suicide with fairly graphic depictions of that act. So, really, not so erotic at all, at least not in a way that felt like one of the defining characteristics of this comic.

Now, some of this is on me. The marketing for the book is clear about the story being about suicide. While it isn’t explicit in the solicit, it is in the press release, with it stating:

Karmen is a provocative story that explores grief, suicide, and redemption told as a visual feast-for-the-eyes and featuring ethereal, fantastic artwork to set the tone.

And the eroticism is also played down in the press release, where it isn’t even really stated outright. The art is just called “sultry,” and a comparison to books like Mirka Andolfo’s Unnatural or (also Mirka Andolfo’s) Mercy is made. Which to be fair, all of that obviously paints a picture that could reasonably be called “vaguely erotic” but, holy shit, no, no, the word suicide absolutely should have been the thing that everyone knew about this book before it came out!

The solicit should have included it, for the same reason this review has a content warning up top, and that’s because people should be allowed to choose not to interact with the concept of suicide. Instead, you get a naked woman's bloody wrists and razor on page 10 with no warning. And then there’s a fart joke on page 13. Then a dead body and a bathtub full of blood on page 17. It’s gross and disappointing content to find out of nowhere in a $4 widely-available monthly comic book story, one that needs to have a content warning, lest someone familiar with March’s mainstream superhero work just pick it up on a lark. 

What’s also bad, in my opinion, is that March drew this conventionally attractive naked woman running (and flying) around Palma immediately after her dead body is shown. The tonal conflict isn’t inherently bad, and it could possibly be interesting (again, with a content warning), but I can’t tell as of yet if this series will pull it off, not based on this single issue. 

Which leads to my lesser but still great problem with this issue and series: this probably wouldn’t be so rough if it were just published as a graphic novel, like it originally was in Europe. It seems like it’s going to be some kind of riff on It’s a Wonderful Life, where our lead ends the series changed, and — more importantly — alive. It’s still a problem to front-load your story with graphic imagery lacking a content warning, but at least it’d be built to mitigate all of that with some kind of ending. Instead, we get a hot naked girl with bandages wrapped around her recently slit wrists flying around and over cool buildings while her supernatural companion makes fart jokes and WHAT. WHY. 

So, we’ve got structural problems, and in my opinion, offensive imagery that needed a content warning, but even with those, this isn’t an especially well-written comic, or at least the dialogue isn’t. Again, to be fair, this is a translated work, and the awkwardness is presumably due to that, but at the same time, it reads like it was translated literally. It’s fine, especially in comparison to the other issues I’ve raised here, but it feels very overwritten in a lot of places, and it feels like more work on translating could have made it stronger. 

That is, if that translation also included the whole of the 160 pages and a content warning for depictions of suicide. 

Overall: I have a morbid curiosity about where the story that begins in Karmen #1 goes, but there is a LOT not to like here, namely the lack of a content warning added to the decision to publish a graphic novel in a serialized format. INCOMPLETE

REVIEW: Karmen #1

Karmen #1
Writer/Artist: Guillem March
Colorist Assists: Tony López
Letterer: Cromatik, LTD
Translated By: Dan Christensen 
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $3.99
Spanish writer and artist GUILLEM MARCH is best known for his ongoing, extensive work with DC Comics on Batman, Catwoman, and Harley Quinn and has worked as an artist on several graphic novels including the English editions of Monika with Titan Comics and The Dream with Europe Comics. Here, he takes up his pen for an edgy new FIVE-PART SERIES about a highly unconventional angel named Karmen and the young woman she takes under her wing when a case of heartbreak strikes hard. Packed with surprises and metaphysics, this gorgeously drawn series deploys tenderness and humor as it dives deep into topics that matter.
Read It Digitally: Karmen #1 via comiXology
Order The Physical First Issue: Karmen #1 via Amazon

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Keigen Rea is watching his wife play The Last of Us Part 2 and thinking about how a simple “press square to swing club” would have greatly improved it. Find him on Twitter @prince_organa or don’t, whatever.