Hexed made a big splash with its first story arc. It came out of nowhere and delivered a story that had plenty of character moments, magic and most importantly the majority of its cast and supporting characters were all women. I still can’t think of another series that has so many female characters driving the story and isn’t just a ploy for sales and Tumblr attention. This issue kicks off the next story arc and some things have happened in the time we’ve been away. Instantly that stood out to me because creator/writer Michael Alan Nelson could have easily continued right from the end point of issue four. Instead this issue felt like a fresh number one as the characters recap the events of the last arc with their dialogue and actions. BOOM! could easily have billed this as a jumping on point for new readers if they wanted to because it really is.
Val has set up shop in a club because now she’s being watched. Lucifer, not wanting to draw attention to herself, finds a very clever way to sneak into the club to see her. Through their conversation we learn that the mayor that hates Val, forced her to open her vault with all the dangerous artifacts and now most of them are already on the black market.
The intern has been thrown into their world and so she’s training under Lucifer. There’s a great and somewhat meta moment in which the intern shows up looking Catwoman esque. Though this kind of defeats the extra hoops that Lucifer jumped through…
It’s also pretty clear that Val and the Harlot are working together on something and we’re introduced to a new character. He’s a little demon dude that the Harlot sends to help Val and he’s pretty gross, but tiny and cute at the same time.
There’s a lot of plot building and story setup in this issue. It’s not bad at all and in fact is one of the stronger second story arcs that I’ve read recently. It definitely leaves you wanting more which is of course a good thing. I could have done with less exposition though. A lot of what we missed was worked into the dialogue which was great, but then the little demon guy explaining things that were easily figured out by the end of the issue didn’t need to happen.
The art continues to be fan-fucking-tastic. I can’t give Dan Mora and Gabriel Cassata enough praise on the art and coloring. This is one of my favorite books just to look at. One thing that I really liked about the art, and this is going to sound weird at first, is the scene in which Lucifer changes clothes (wait for it) because we don’t see her in her underwear. In practically every comic, movie, TV show, video game, hell even a music video; if a woman changes it’s a free chance to see some undies, but Mora and company don’t do that here and I was grateful for it. That’s not Lucifer’s character and the simple fact that we just see her buttoning her pants and already dressed was the perfect choice. It might seem dumb, but let’s all remember how pointless it was in Star Trek: Into Darkness.
There was some “pazazz” missing in this issue, but it’s still a hell of an issue. I’m already dying for the next issue and I can see some great things on the horizon for it. If you missed the first arc, I kid you not, this is a great place to jump on… or just read all of them it’s really good.
Score: 4/5
Writer: Michael Alan Nelson Artist: Dan Mora Colorist: Gabriel Cassata Publisher: BOOM! Studios Price: $3.99 Release Date: 12/10/14 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital