Review: ‘Gargoyles’ #12 Sets Up Future Events

Writer Greg Weisman provides a mostly strong script that successfully ties up most of this series. However, it is hurt by the seeming randomness of the prior issues, and a shift in storytelling for this issue’s end.

The interior art and covers H and J are by artist George Kambadais. He does well on both the interiors and the covers. This is especially true with the interiors due to how fluid his style is. Though the final panel has an overly obvious outline on one character. As for the covers H is arguably better than J, because the lack of trade dress on cover J apparently creates a visual imbalance.

Colorists Giovanna La Pietra and Valeria Verdi do a good enough job overall. Yet, there are some pages with areas where the texture seems to differ in coloring style.

Letterer Jeff Eckleberry does a great job assisting the visual pacing with the placement of the text. Eckleberry also does a nice job with emphasis by bolding certain words.

Covers A, N, and O feature an image by artist David Nakayama. The highlights of this image are the sense of depth and color palette.

Artist Lucio Parrillo creates the image one finds on covers B, K, and S. The design is gothic due to how realistic the figures are. Unfortunately, the image is overly dark in color for covers B and K. Nevertheless, some potential buyers might find it possibly pointless to look at cover S due to the lack of color. Thus, why the design is good the execution has flaws.

There are three versions of the cover image by artist Jae Lee. These covers are D, M, and R. Covers D and M have coloring by colorist June Chung. It is worth mentioning that without the trade dress Cover M lacks a necessary break in the colors. Though all three covers display nice line work cover D arguably looks the best due to the addition of hues and trade dress.

Artist Lesley “Leirix” Li is responsible for the creation of covers C, L, and S. The line work and close are fine. However, there are a problems with the image. The most glaring flaw of the design is the moon being too close to the earth. There is also the arguable flaw of some characters looking on-model to how they are usually while others look rather different.

The variant covers by artist Ken Haeser are P, Q, and T. They are interesting variations of the same image. Arguably the least likable out of the three is cover T due to how it loses the interesting text background. Also the miniature version of David Xanatos’s head looks out of place without the rest of the trade dress. As for covers P and Q they have a design that is refreshing with or without color.

Variant covers E and I are part of series of connecting pieces by the art team Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner. While most of the image would be fine on its own there is a portion where it connects that precludes it from working.

Covers F and G feature action figure art of the gargoyle Fu-Dog by artist Miriana Puglia. The color palette works well with both versions of the design.

Gargoyles #12 is out now from Dynamite Entertainment