Volume 1 of Charm City: The Indie Comix Dispatch

Creative Team

Author: Josh EiserikeArt: Josh Eiserike, Scott van DomelenCover: Hugo PetrusPublisher: Scout Comics

Ratings

Story: 4.1 StarsInterior Artwork: 4.1 StarsCover Artwork: 3.8 StarsDialogue: 4.0 StarsMechanics: 4.2 StarsEditing: 4.0 Stars

About the Book:

Charm City is a story set-in present-day Baltimore where a serial killer is stalking the streets carving symbols into the corpses they leave behind. With the police force struggling to fully comprehend the killers’ motivations it is left to our protagonist, Alyssia Singer, a music journalist on the local paper to recognise the full implications behind the murderer’s intent.

The reason for Alyssia comprehending the added dimensions to the crimes is her secret background. She was a witch and member of a local coven before her excommunication.

As the story unfolds, we see Alyssia living her new life as a music journalist with her new friends, none of whom know her background. However, the murders cause her to have to reopen connections to her witching past and her estranged family, a family we learn were closely linked to that past, in an effort to thwart the killer’s coming depredations.

Whilst we don’t yet know the full reasons behind Alyssia’s excommunication there is a really well delivered flashback in the form of an epilogue that starts to fill in some of the details of the complications in her past life that led to her current, non-magical, sojourn as a journalist.

This first volume sets the story up well so that we fully understand Alyssia’s new mundane world and her past magical world and get a good sense of the fault lines that lie between the two. The characters are effectively introduced to us and the story is left well-grounded for the reader to enjoy its future development.

One very creative touch that the author uses in Charm City is the inclusion of QR codes that link to You Tube music tracks, Patti Smith and The Clash. A really nice touch given that the protagonist is a music journo

Reviewer’s Notes:

Charm City is a story that has a Magical Realism ring to it. It juxtaposes the everyday life and elements of the crimes unfolding in it against the deeper, secret, magical backdrop known only to the protagonist.

The opening catches the attention well. We soon see the antagonist in action though as this opening scene cuts off it manages to deliver a twist all of its own. The victim shows herself to be a powerful witch who it appears has been selected in error by a hapless assailant. It’s only later we see that the vic was specifically selected and the assailant was anything but hapless. An effective way of upping the ante regards the killer.

There is a good blend of action and lead character inner turmoil. The two elements were always delivered in an engaging, mutually, supporting way and the world building that came along with this, as Alyssia’s secret past is revealed, was well paced and delivered in a clear manner so that as a reader I was fully up to speed with the story as it unfolded. As this is volume 1 there’s still more to be revealed about Alyssia’s past conflicts and the exact reasons for her excommunication but the story is well set up for future development.

The characters were all clear and distinct and had their own easily identifiable motivations and the plot was believable within the magical realism reality of its world.

There was a very well delivered flashback in the epilogue that showed the impact of past events on some of the characters we see in the main storyline.

The artwork was very good, and frame type and selection reinforced the narrative very well. For example, the way the opening action between the victim and the killer was set out reinforced the victim’s confidence that we later saw was clearly misplaced.

Overall, the story is effectively and efficiently delivered. It has a well-paced mix of action and inner turmoil, the former driving the latter so that we can clearly see that Alyssia’s character is on a transformative arc as she is forced to confront the demons in her past. Definitely a series of stories to follow.