Orision
Staff: Bradley Golden, Ugur Sertcelik, Chris Allen
Overview:
If you like the horror genre, you’re gonna love this.
Review:
Alright so today I’ve got “Orision” from Second Sight Comics on the chopping block. The comic was split into multiple parts but I will only be reviewing part 1 today (as per my site’s guidelines). Just looking at the cover I can tell I’m in for an artistic treat so let’s get to it shall we? (As a forewarning to anyone downloading this, it’s a bit graphic and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who gets squeamish.)
Art
So the art of this comic is downright beautiful. It’s done in a stylized black and white (well… kinda grayscale) but it uses this contrast effectively. I couldn’t help but imagine that they thought about going for color but decided to stick with B&W for the sake of a cohesive aesthetic. If there is one thing that detracts from the overall quality of the art it’s some very “extreme” expressions. It can kind of be forgiven in this medium as you need to be overly expressive sometimes in place of a more subtle gesture that you could get away in a moving media (like film). Still, some were a little overly exaggerated but that’s just a nit-pick.
There is some great use a perspective (especially some dutch angles with visually directive onomatopoeia) and some of the poses we get could only be from someone with a mastery of the fundamentals of anatomy. Now this isn’t a comic drawn in the traditional american superhero style so don’t go in expecting that and there is nothing wrong with not doing that style- just be aware of it.
Lettering
The lettering sol solid, pretty standard, legible stuff. Don’t be confused- when I say that it’s high praise. I keep talking about how lettering you don’t remember for anything bad is the best kind of lettering there is. Lettering should just be intrusive enough to get your attention and not enough to be distracting. They do a solid job here. No complaints.
Story
So the story is a pretty straightforward affair. High in the snowy mountains an expedition is attacked by a [SPOILER] and the characters fight for their life. It kind of plays out like a horror movie and it’s a lot of fun to read. The visuals back it up very nicely and it is well paced. One of the shortcomings, something inherent to the horror genre in general, is that we don’t get a lot of characterization. There is only so much we can get out of screams and death but it does come up a little short in that department. The same goes for the lore and background. I mean I wasn’t expecting the first issue of a series to explain everything to me but it does come off as a little sparse in terms of what we know other than, “Oh my god a monster! Run!”. This isn’t Shakespeare but I don’t know if it needed to be.
Overall
So this comic left a good taste in my mouth overall. Yeah it was a quick monster/horror romp in the snowy mountains, but by God if it wasn’t a fun little ride! The visceral artstyle carried it and some of the panels straight up blew my mind in terms of the detail that was put into them. If you are a horror fan- this is probably something you won’t want to miss. If you are not a fan of the genre, you’ll probably be pretty “meh” on the whole thing. Give it a read!
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