Got this off the Hoopla! library app. Read the Kelly Sue Deconnick Intro and promptly returned it. My question: Who the hell would WANT to read the book after that drivel?
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Eh, I lied. I read like the first ten pages. They are a totally realistic fistfight scene between the skinny chick on the cover and an adult male cop. That's how it always happens, right?
I read this when it was coming out under Icon originally and it wasn't that bad, though it was so Bendis in the way the story was stretched out, Maleev had to draw extra pages to fit in all the pauses and repetitive lines. Then they stopped making it because people stopped buying it, because these two were also doing a Moon Knight series at Marvel together and they were actually getting paid for that so it took priority and that meant delays, even after they finished Moon Knight. It took them years to get the second half of the initial ten issue run done, which ended on a cliffhanger, and then I learned a decade later they wrapped everything up in another five-issue min-series through Dark Horse.
I decided "fuck it, why not?" and grabbed the omnibus Dark Horse put out with all fifteen issues. They did the thing where they put the covers at the end of the book instead of using them to break up the issues like chapters, which bugs me because I like knowing where the issues end so I can use them as a stopping point.
I will say that you can tell, when you read it all together, they expected this to last a lot longer than it did. The initial five issue arc is slower paced, building up the character, why she's doing what she's doing, and why people are responding to it. The final five, however, I think they were just getting sick of people asking them about it and just decided to wrap everything up so they could move onto other projects. All of a sudden, this revolution that was exclusive to Portland ended up going national without Scarlet's direct involvement and now everything's better and Trump never won and the people have the power back and yeah, all that shit.
Would I recommend it? Probably not. The artwork was solid at first, with Maleev pushing himself by doing everything except the lettering, but you can tell by the end he was done. The story's dragged out and while it predicted some of the outrage mobs, it overestimated the morals, dedication and work ethic of said lefties.
