By Jacob Cordas — Welcome to the world of witchcraft. The fey are around every corner, looking to trick and capture you. Ghosts live in attics and everybody’s familial legacy is on the cusp of trapping them. The world is hazy and easy to get lost in - just like every single page of Mamo #1. 

From the get go, the world is so well rendered that I couldn’t help but not want to turn the page. It’s a deceptively simple first page, one all consuming image of a girl in her mid to late teens half sitting half standing on a bike. But the details the creator, Sas Milledge (The Lost Carnival), are instantly able to inform us of with only one text book are astounding. 

Her hair is windswept but her face is determined in spite of the inconvenience. She stares proudly on letting us know a journey is about to begin and absolutely nothing is going to stop her. The clouds swirl overhead making it feel like we are mere moments away from a storm when, in reality, we are merely moments away from being consumed by our heroine’s tempest. A city deep in the background and clearly a long way down a hill: we know her willingness to travel physically and the necessity of this success. The dark ocean lurks on the right side of the page making us ever present of her anxieties of something outside of her ability to control impressing itself upon her life. 

And the only words on this page are a simple location tag: “Somewhere, On The Edge Of Haresden…” It grounds you in the unspecified specificity - a world that could be ours maybe is ours, perhaps is a simple side step away. 

This is elegant and precise storytelling. What Milledge is able to do on the first page alone is what most comics are desperate to do over twenty-four pages before ad space. It’s tight nuanced storytelling from the get go, never leaving emptiness where implication could instead be placed. 

I mean I’ve written almost four hundred words already and haven’t gotten past the first page. And I feel a certain ethical dilemma in even journeying past this. The story is simple and clear, sure. But it is also deeply evocative, well paced and well told. To even start talking about more than this than the suggestions of content in my first paragraph is to do a disservice. I came in blind, based purely off the cover. And I think you should to. 

You should not know what you are getting into with Mamo #1. Don’t read anything else. Don’t go looking for summaries or analysis. Just read the book. Bathe in the quality of the storytelling. Embrace the folk tale in it. Live in its sumptuous art. To write anything more than that is to stand in the way of one of the best first issues of the year. 

Overall: Mamo #1 is a folk tale comic book that invites you in and never lets you leave. It’s a fey story for the faint of heart. 9.8/10

REVIEW: Mamo #1

Mamo #1
Writer: Sas Milledge
Artist: Sas Milledge
Publisher: BOOM! Studios - BOOM! Box
Price: $4.99
BOOM! Studios is proud to showcase the incredible artistic vision of Sas Milledge!
Can Orla O'Reilly embrace her destiny in order to bridge the divide between humanity and the faerie world.
Orla, the youngest in a long line of hedge witches, finds herself pulled back to her hometown after the death of her grandmother - Mamo.
Without Mamo managing magical relationships between the townsfolk and the fae, the seas are impossible to fish, the crops have soured... and Jo Manalo's attic has been taken over by a poltergeist!
Now, Orla and Jo will both be pulled into worlds they never wanted to be part of. Can the two girls work together to save the town?
Sas Milledge (The Lost Carnival: A Dick Grayson Graphic Novel) debuts her first original series perfect for fans of The Last Witch and Sabrina The Teenage Witch that answers the question of how we all reconcile our responsibilities with our dreams for our own future.
More Info: Mamo #1

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My name is Jacob Cordas (@jacweasel) and I am starting to think I may in fact be qualified to write this.