Review: ‘Gargoyles: Demona’ #3 Is In Disharmony
by Benjamin Hall
Summary
Demona and her foster daughter are trying to live their lives in the year 1138. Meanwhile a local stone carver is facing continual personal troubles in his life. What will happen when the three cross paths? Also what magic lurks in the stone work of the local church?
Overall
5.9/10Writer Greg Weisman uses another story in a way that is definitely more than just acquiring inspiration in order to create this issue. Despite this Weisman adds enough of an original spin on things while giving proper credit to not be plagiarizing. As for the dialogue, Weisman does a good job showing the development of Demona and her companion. Unfortunately, the narrative focuses too much on human characters and not enough on Demona. This results in her being the equal to a day player rather than a lead in a theatrical play. Not to mention that Weisman scripts some panels that one could view as extraneous. The result of these scripting problems is making it hard to foresee a positive future for this title.
Artist Frank Paur creates the interior art along with a variant cover design. It seems that Paur is mainly doing a style for the characters that evokes woodcut art. However, Paur is also seemingly using other artistic methods for certain elements like the castle on the cover. This arguably causes a disharmony in the overall results. Thus, the art is mostly of medium quality when it isn’t jarring the reader, at least in this reviewer’s experience.
Colorist Robby Bevard displays a nice range of hues that enhance the visuals. Nevertheless, this reviewer personally feels that Bevard’s talents are only able to increase the appeal by so much due to Paur’s style.
Letterer Jeff Eckleberry does a high quality job. Yet, there are debatable moments where Ecklberry’s work seems to be incongruous with Paur’s art style.
The main cover design plus its variations are by artist Meghan Hetrick. This design is a high quality one with a great sense of depth, but there is nothing about it that is new.
Artist Jae Lee along with colorist June Chung provide their respective talents to one of the more high quality sets of variant covers. Still, Lee’s style does not match with the cartoon basis of the franchise (Gargoyles 1994-1997) and the black background limits Chung.
The final cover design by artist David Cousens looks atmospheric in a moody way. Though the unnecessary dutch angle effect along with the seemingly overly large wing span are flaws.
Gargoyles: Demona #3 comes out from Dynamite Entertainment on September 10th.
