Night-Gwen #1

Night-Gwen #1

Marvel Comics 2021

Written by Vita Ayala

Illustrated by Farid Karami

Coloured by Erick Arciniega

Lettered by VC’s Cory Petit

INTRODUCING: NIGHTBIRD!

By day, Dr. Gwendolyn Stacy is Ravencroft Asylum’s leading psychiatrist. But by night, she dons the guise of the vigilante known as Nightbird! But how did this happen? Why did this happen? And what does Kyle Richmond, the Nighthawk, have to do with it? There may not be any time to find out, because Nightbird must hunt down a new killer called the Jackal!

I’ve kind of been avoiding this, reading the spin-offs that is, because there are just way too many of them. Some sound interesting enough but this so far has been lucky to come home with me. The idea behind this struck me as interesting and that Gwen would’ve grown up, went to college and started a career without being everywhere like some lame-arse gimmick is a great thing to see. Though the book should’ve been named Nightbird not Night-Gwen as that nearly turned me off the book completely. So that she’s got a job by day and a vigilante career at night makes her feel more like a traditional heroine than I was expecting and that Ravencroft is still home for the superhuman insane is utterly fantastic.

I am very much enjoying the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through the way that sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceedingly well. The character development is fantastic and that’s due to how we see the dialogue, the character interaction and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances that they encounter. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way as it introduces us to the story, the characters and this world they inhabit.

I am really digging the way that this is being structured and how we see the layers within the story begging to emerge. The layers are where the interesting bits are as they contain a lot of good characterisation and the little things that work together to create the larger arc and move it forward. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is incredibly well achieved.

I really like the interiors that we see here. The linework is fantastic and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the attention to detail is really quite beautifully rendered. I think we see a lot of backgrounds being utilised throughout the book and I really am impressed with that. How they work within the composition of the panels which is how we see the depth perception, sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story is really incredibly well done. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a superbly strong eye for storytelling. The colour work is amazing to see. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a marvellous understanding of how colour works. I will say I love the Batgirl-esque approach we see though Flamebird came more to mind, still the computers and such it felt right.

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This is a book I could get behind on a regular basis and it’s too bad that this won’t last further than what it is. This is the other part of these so-called events that I loathe, we won’t be seeing any of the good titles move past the event and Gwen-insert-whatever-name-here will go back to being an annoying character again. So enjoy this while you can because this is the kind of Marvel title I want to make mine.