Patra #1 Review

 

Writer: James Robinson

Artist & Colorist: Scott Kolins

Letterer: Jim Campbell

Cover Artists: Scott Kolins & Francesco Francavilla

Digital Art Technician: Mars Ralston

Designer: Hannah Noble

Editors: Misha Gehr, Chuck Howitt-Lease & Daniel Chabon

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Price: $4.99

Release Date: August 21, 2024

 

Squad cars roar through the streets of Billford, Minnesota. A neighbor reported blood on a neighbor’s front window. When Sheriff Baines and his deputies Jimmy and Sara arrive at the modest single-family home, they find the bodies of parents and their three sons in the living room. What happened to their daughter, and who perpetrated the vicious attack? Let’s leap into Patra #1 and find out!

 

Story

While the Sheriff and his deputies assess the crime scene, a young girl awakens in the forest. Patra climbs to her feet and stumbles between the trees in her pajamas and too big sneakers. She can't remember how she got there. Patra can't recall anything that took place at her house. She senses something isn't right inside her. It goes beyond her lost memories. Then, a mask covers her face, and Patra holds a bloody knife in her hand.

 

As evening falls, Doctor Dakari arrives in Billford. He parks his classic car and discovers a hive of activity in the police station. James Robinson suggests that Dakari is the narrator of Patra #1. Despite the Sheriff’s initial reluctance at the intrusion, Baines welcomes the doctor’s insights. Dakari tells Baines about a young man at his mental wellness center. Jeremy Jones has a traumatic past, and this isn’t the first time he has escaped.

 

As Doctor Dakari relates his tale, Patra struggles with her new situation. She has seen a beloved pet, even though it no longer lives. Patra spotted the town in the distance upon awakening. But despite walking all day, she has yet to reach it. As Patra walks through the arboreal wilderness, someone else haunts the woods. While she initially casts it away, she later elects to keep the bloody knife. But the mask and the knife are a package deal. No matter how far away Patra throws it, the mask reappears on her face. The girl isn’t sure what is more frightening, the man she struggles to elude or the mask that keeps finding her.

 

While Patra wanders through the forest, Sheriff Baines takes Doctor Dakari to the crime scene in Patra #1. Sheriff Baines has reason to fear. He has never seen anything as violent as Jeremy Baines' slaughter. And if Doctor Dakari is correct, there is worse to come.

 

 

Art

The rounded vehicles racing past the wood frame houses imbue Patra #1 with small-town appeal. The police, clad in uniforms and jackets, hold their guns as they enter the house. As their shadows stretch across a carpet littered with broken toys that once were people, Patra awakens amid deciduous trees and evergreens. The wild strands of her thick hair resemble the tall grass surrounding her face. The skull mask that covers her face and her star-covered pajamas enhance the spectral nature of this eerie place. When she casts the mask and knife away, it seems to fade into the grass. But does it disappear, or is it the green ground fog that obscures her happy black pet?

 

Scott Kolins separates panels with black frames lined with red. The red lines match the blood-soaked carpet, Patra's bloody appearance, and the doctor's finned 1950s American car. Yellow, pink, and green pastels soften the busy police headquarters. But Doctor Dakari’s tale resembles a black, purple, and red painting on beige cave walls, as gods strike down Humans and stride like giants through civilization.

 

Jim Campbell casts black uppercase letters into white dialogue balloons and colored narrative boxes in Patra #1. Words grow bold for intonation, swell for volume, and rarely shrink. Sound effects relate racing and resilient vehicles and glowing knives that hiss into existence in the moonlight. But nothing is as powerful as a young girl’s verbal reaction to this strange, unearthly danger. Thanks to Dark Horse Comics for providing a copy for review.

 

Final Thoughts

After a killer escapes his doctor's care, he renews a pattern of violence that disrupts the tranquility of a small Minnesota town. But while the psychiatrist who relates this tragic tale knows more than he should, a savage killer hunts a young girl through an ethereal jungle inhabited by dead loved ones in Patra #1.

 

Rating 9.8/10

 

To preview interior art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch. 

Apologies that this one is so late, but it was too good not to review!