By Jacob Cordas — An Unkindess Of Ravens is hokey in all the right ways. It’s charming and delightful exuding sincerity on every page. It takes the charm of how we remember Archie and mixes it with a dash of Hanna-Barbera magic to make something unique and refreshing. 

The creative team of Dan Panosian, Marianna Ignazzi, Fabiana Mascolo, and Mike Florentino use every talent at their disposal to create a comic that can be so many things all at one time. 

It opens on a sequence Panosian draws with a horror flare. The pages set a tone that looms over the rest. While this is still a first issue, with the expositional issues that so often drag down first issues, the opening sequence adds tension to all of this. Focusing in on the atrocity of the witch trials before launching into a lighter affair about witches, it plants the fear of what we know must happen. 

But the journey is going to be great. As it pivots out of this, Ignazzi takes over the art. She provides the world with a clean, teen aesthetic. And pairing that with Mascolo’s colors gives it a vibrancy I rarely get to see. The art carries the narrative lightly and briskly along leaving only a sense of whimsy behind, a whimsy we know will soon be supplanted by something far worse. 

The writing leans heavily into the archness of the characters and narrative, making hokey heavenly. Dialogue is stilted but in a way that stylizes the world, not hampering it. Dads talk exactly how Dads™ talk. Teenage girls talk exactly how Teenage Girls™ talk. Teachers talk exactly how Teachers™ talk. Every line helps propel the story and narrative while making the tropes a literalized element of the narrative. 

This heightens the tension severely. The archness of the teenage elements against the opening sequence makes the tonal irony infinitely more threatening. Questions about how this will pan out are now questions of how the genre will shift and morph. What kind of style changes will need to happen to make this world as dark as it suggests it will go? 

Or is it in that archness that true darkness can be found? 

It still falters slightly handling the exposition though the stylizing helps lampshade the expositional weight. It needs to introduce so many characters so quickly, so many world building elements. You can’t be surprised if it gets dragged down by its own weight here and there. 

The comic is just so delightful that even at its weakest it still shines. An Unkindess Of Ravens #1 is a comic that’s always a delight. It be nothing less than surprising if the issues the come after this don’t cast a spell on me I can’t ignore. 

Overall: An Unkindess Of Ravens #1 is a high school witch comic that mixes horror with hokey to delightful effect. 8/10

REVIEW - An Unkindess of Ravens #1

An Unkindess Of Ravens #1
Writer: Dan Panosian
Artist: Marianna Ignazzi
Colorist: Fabiana Mascolo
Letterer: Mike Florentino
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Price: $3.99
Not all the witches burned during the Salem Witch Trials - and the ones that survived did so together. Now, generations later, their descendants protect the ancient secrets entrusted to them. They call themselves the Ravens. Wilma is the new girl in school, and she plans to go completely unnoticed - except that she bears an eerie resemblance to the Raven member Waverly. And Waverly just went missing. But the truth behind Waverly's disappearance will put the entire coven in danger - and Wilma will have to rely on power she never knew she had if she wants to save her new friends. Writer Dan Panosian (Slots) and artist Marianna Ignazzi present a supernatural mystery, perfect for fans of The Marked and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (2019). 
Release Date: Sep 23, 2020
Buy It Digitally: An Unkindness of Ravens #1

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My name is Jacob Cordas (@jacweasel) and I am not qualified to write this.