Review: ‘Carmen Red Claw’ #2 Captures The Spirit Of The American West With Occult Detectives

Welcome to the table,

Carmen Red Claw continues to ride across the weird west on a gun-shooting, horse-riding, myth-making adventurer that feels right at home in the well-storied world of icons like the B.P.R.D. and Lobster Johnson. This is on account of the skills of storytellers Mike Mignola and Rae Allen, with colorwork by Michelle Madsen and the always delightful lettering of Clem Robins, who I am convinced works on just about every comic I read on the regular.

Let’s ride!

The series’ debut issue kicked off, introducing us to Carmen Dascher — a hunter of demons and fiends — and Yargoss, a floating long-tailed lizard who comes across like a mashup of Iago from the animated Aladdin film and an unhinged Pokémon who wants to fight anything that falls into its field of vision. This is a good thing as it adds an element of humor to a heavy story laced with cultural tribulations and what seems to be shaping up as backstabbing alliances if my intuition is right.

In the second installment, Carmen finds herself in a difficult situation as her cattle seem to be unbothered, while others in her immediate community have lost nearly 800 head in recent days. The implications between the speech bubbles are strongly weighted — at least through a lens that understands the cultural implication and history of such things. It is a factor of the storytelling that continues to grow from seeds planted in issue #1.

What I dig about the way this comes across is that in a lot of westerns I enjoy, there are vast expanses of space where the characters exist without dialogue. Many of these, especially the Italian “spaghetti westerns,” do a whole mess of storytelling with looks and implications. On the paneled page, that can be difficult to get across, but the liquid animated stylings of Allen’s sequential art does a lot of lifting to really translate those moments across this comic.

One particular moment that really struck me: Carmen sitting on her bed, waiting for the danger lurking about. There are some great lines that draw the eye from the insightful panel and trace through shadow and color to really make the moment feel quiet and tense without having to cloud it with dialogue.

I love to read and enjoy 12-panel pages full of talking heads when it serves the story. I am also a fan of when this medium’s particular artistry is brought to full effect on the page, and it is for sure working really well in this issue.

That’s not to say there aren’t some action beats along the way. It can’t all be tension without payoff, and we get to see some six-gun slinging in a saloon before this issue runs its course. At the same time, the balance struck between the “calm” and the “storm” that follows is powerful.

Issue #2 leaves us on a cliffhanger — Carmen leaping onto the side of a moving train with Yargoss flying along beside her. I’m not sure what she is going to find in those cars, but I’m betting it won’t be the missing cattle. On the off chance it is, I am almost certain they will not be alone.

Until next time, Carmen Red Claw captures the spirit of the American West and binds it to the strange world of occult detectives and strange creatures in a way that only Mignola and his posse of creatives can do.

Also, I still don’t trust that baby … it worries me.