Witchblade #1 Review

 

Writer: Marguerite Bennett

Artist: Giuseppe Cafaro

Colorist: Arif Prianto

Letterer: Troy Peteri

Editors: Marc Silvestri, Matt Hawkins & Elena Salcedo

Cover Artists: Marc Silvestri & Arif Prianto; Giuseppe Cafaro & Arif Prianto; Sketch Cover,Dani & Brad Simpson; J Scott Campbell & Tanya Lehoux; Bill Sienkiewicz

Publisher: Top Cow Productions & Image Comics

Price: $4.99

Release Date: July 17, 2024

 

Sara Pizzoli served her country overseas. She protected her neighborhood in New York. Yet, as she prepares for an undercover assignment, Sara Pizzoli is about to die. What will Sara do with her afterlife? Let’s leap into Witchblade #1 and see!

 

Story

Sara's father was a cop. After he died, she vowed to follow his example. She enlisted and traveled the world. She tried to help and protect others whenever she could. Yet the battlefield overwhelmed her. So, like many soldiers, she sought another purpose at home. Again, she followed in her father's footsteps and enrolled in the police academy. But aside from meeting a fellow cadet who made sound effects with his voice and keeping criminals off the streets, Sara had another purpose. After she graduated, Sara studied police records and pieced together clues. Her fellow cops looked the other way when her father died. Some even conspired to kill him. Sara wants to find everyone responsible and bring them to justice.

 

Marguerite Bennett introduces Sara Pizzoli as a woman on the cusp of change. Yet a cop bent on revenge is not the only character in Witchblade #1. Bennett's story also introduces Kenneth Irons. He's a heartless man who hunts an object of power. His search takes him to Germany. When his excavation crews get close, he pulls back the heavy machinery and summons a volunteer. Despite the guns trained on her, a woman's hopes rise as her questing fingers unearth a prize. Then the gold-and-red spider leaps onto her, bites her neck and cheeks, and the woman bounds away. Kenneth Irons orders his people to track her. The construction worker is merely a courier, a vessel for the host that now controls her. Kenneth seeks the spindly metal spider's final victim, the as-yet-unknown person who will provide a forever home.

 

In Witchblade #1, Marguerite Bennett reboots Marc Silvestri, David Wohl, Brian Haberlin, and Michael Turner's 1990s tale for the modern age. In her story of corrupt cops, rich people seeking power, and criminals dehumanizing the poor for profit, Bennett introduces a woman who lost her father, witnessed the horrors of the battlefield, fears her friends, and will receive unimaginable power. But can Sara prevent the ancient entity from controlling her as it did the construction worker? Can she avoid becoming the weapon of a wealthy man?

 

Art

Driving rain soaks the gleaming skyscrapers, a homeless man, and a taped-off crime scene. Sara frowns over a steaming disposable cup at police files illuminated by a desk lamp. Giuseppe Cafaro hurls us forward in time with a two-page spread showing a witchy woman at the heart of the storm of her becoming. Then he takes us back in time, before Sara’s introduction, to show Kenneth surrounded by armed guards at the excavation site outside the gleaming skyscrapers of Berlin, Germany.

 

Arif Prianto paints this bedtime tale against cloudy blue skies as the gold and red metal spider leaps from the brown dirt. The construction worker hurls people away and bounds toward distant ground-lit brown buildings. The woman’s eyes blaze red and white as she pulls a purple-gray man from his car. The air turns orange with yellow direction lines as a guard opens fire. Red spills from a blonde woman on a white-blue and brown floor. But the opening two-pager proves most arresting, as flowing brown hair gleams and Sara attacks people with the whipping tendrils of her gold, silver, and red armor in Witchblade #1.

 

Troy Peteri adorns Giuseppe Cafaro and Arif Prianto’s art with black uppercase letters on red-outlined golden narrative boxes and white dialogue balloons. Immense white letters in gold-bordered black boxes place us in time and space. Enlarged dialogue and energetic sound effects enhance skidding cars, firing guns, and the top of a man's head tumbling off his jaw amid a fountain of blood. Thanks to Image Comics and Top Cow Productions for providing a copy for review.

 

Final Thoughts

As Sara Pizzoli, Kenneth Irons, and a reawakened deity converge, an undercover cop on the hunt for vengeance gains superpowers as she tackles police corruption, human trafficking, and powermongers who kill the body and destroy the soul in Witchblade #1.

 

Rating 9.8/10

 

For more cover art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.