She has quirks (2 brandies a night, one at a bar, and one at home), determination, and the ability to credibly survive a story like this one. Abbott is extremely engaging as a main character. The originality here comes in the portrayal, not the parts themselves. While the occult elements themselves are not exactly unique (light versus darkness, a reluctant champion, a vague magical guide who's into drugs and speaks in riddles), and the characters are very much archetypes-an outsider hero, her cop friend, an ex-lover with criminal ties, the hardass but good-hearted boss, etc.), Ahmed uses the tropes of both detective and horror stories extremely well. It adds to the drama and is extremely realistic. When Abbott confronts a potential villain in the book, she's unable to convince anyone because she's black and her antagonist is white. Instead, what we get is a sense of not only how hard things are for Abbott and her friends, but the desperation when you are not only fighting the supernatural, but also the human world around you. Saladin's ability to make that point without sacrificing any of the horror plot-at no time does the pace slow to provide a character with a speech-to-the-reader moment-really impressed me. But there's also other elements, including being a woman in a perceived man's world (reporting), her desire not to be tied down to a man on anything but equal terms, Abbott's concern about showing open bi-sexuality, and the pressures on both white and black people in this world, where even the good people like her newspaper boss are caught between doing the right thing and survival.Īny and all of these topics could be placed in a modern setting. And if the story were just about Abbott fighting racism and the occult, this would be a good story. ![]() So right away, we get some racist hints that become further out in the open as Saladin moves on with the story. Look at that entrance! We learn so much from the visuals here by Kivela, combined with Ahmed's set up dialogue, including the fact that the cops/reporters already gathered want to blame everything on the Black Panthers. From the opening page, where Abbott hits the scene in a great half-splash that sets the story in all its time period glory, Saladin is ready to take on social issues that haven't been resolved, over forty years later. Setting the story in 1972, Ahmed uses his protagonist, a take-no-shit reporter, to comment on problems from both her time period and ours. In this case, Saladin provides a cool story about light versus darkness, but it's clear there's more than that at work. Godzilla is the living embodiment of the horror of nuclear war. ![]() Lovecraft's stories feature great conceptual ideas, but aren't exactly hiding his racism. ![]() Dracula is about fear of the foreign other. One of the great strengths of horror as a genre is its ability to work side-by-side with social commentary, both for good and bad purposes. But vague racism and sexism is nothing compared to the demonic forces looking to destroy her in this amazing mini-series that's out now in collected form from Boom! Studios. It's even worse if you're a black woman reporter who isn't afraid to run stories about police brutality. Detroit in the early 70s isn't an easy place to be if you're a black woman.
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