Written by Cullen Bunn
Art by Jonas Scharf
Published by BOOM! Studios
Basilisk #1 hits so hard and fast that I didn’t bother taking notes while I read like I usually do. This comic needed to be consumed whole and taken apart for reflection later.
Two years ago, a group of five mutants cam down from the mountains and began killing the townsfolks around them.
In the two years that followed, the killings kept coming.
One woman is tracking them. Hannah.
It’s in a small diner in a mountain town that she finds one of them.
Regan separated herself from the other four sometime ago and, unintentionally, became an easy target for Hannah.
Hannah knocks her out and takes her away to interrogate her.
But Hannah hadn’t counted on Regan wanting the same thing as her: to find the remaining mutants and put an end to the murders. The two form an unlikely agreement. Regan knows that Hannah doesn’t know what these mutants are capable of–and that they are already looking for Regan.
I can’t help but wonder, what kind of homecoming waits for Regan if she and Hannah do find the others?
The visual pacing of Basilisk #1 is frantic, but in the best way. I had to make a conscious effort to slow down and really take in the story, the art, the characters and appreciate it all.
When Hannah is setting up her gear in her motel room, there is a panel with a cigarette hanging between her fingers. The colors are so perfect, you’d swear someone snapped a picture. Not to mention how the colorist absolutely nails diner lighting. Or the colors of a sunset over mountains. These moments of almost-photorealism set off the gritty elements of the story all the more by the contrast.
There are so many little details to pick up, especially in the action panels, that it’s worth a second, closer read after the initial frenzy.
