The Deadliest Bouquet is a comic written by Erica Schultz with art by Carola Borelli. This is story you could easily believe was from a movie or a tv show. This is about three mostly estranged sisters whose mom has just been murdered. Now these ladies must come together to cope and figure out who did it. The sisters are all named after different flowers(I don’t know if this was inspired by Keeping Up Appearances or not), Rose, Poppy, and Violet. There is some real beef here greater than sibling rivalry as these three are in constant conflict with each other. We do get the occasional flashback that attempts to explain why they act the way they do, but the answers appear to be more focuses on the how than the why. The story starts off on somber tone and doesn’t go any higher than that. If anything, it gets lower. This story is BIG FULL of dialogue. Some pages are very wordy which supports my belief that this could be adapted for the big screen. But sometimes the dialogue can get a bit confusing, as sometimes when the sisters speak the comic doesn’t use speech bubbles, but boxes color-coded to the sisters’ flower namesake. Animal Crossing taught me a bit about flowers but apparently not enough. This can slow you down as you try to keep the speakers straight but if your thumb is greener than mine you might not have that problem. This story has excellent pacing that will keep you engaged the entire time. This is a tale of a family navigating drama while attempting to investigate a tragedy, and it doesn’t go the way you think.

            From a flower to a bar to an enormous house, this story moves all over the place. And these locations don’t just fade into the background; they stick out just enough to add an extra bit of weight to a scene. This is a dialogue heavy comic and as such it is almost required that the characters show their emotions on their face, and you’ll find that here. Though the main expression is anger you’ll quite a few other looks that tell the story their words aren’t. Sadly this comic does suffer from face sameness. If not for the different skin tones and hair colors you’d probably get confused more often than not. The hair is drawn very nicely, and it has great movement. This story takes place in 1998 and if you didn’t know that from the beginning, you’d start to have questions after seeing their outfits. And there are frequent outfit changes which help make this story more realistic. This comic is not afraid to get active and when it does it looks great. Fights and scuffles flow well and won’t get you lost. Overall this is some good looking art that pairs well with this good story.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like family dramas with mystery and conflict this’ll be a good read. This is a story written by a woman, about three women, revolving around the death of another woman, woman woman woman woman so this tale is very woman-centric.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“So we’re not gonna talk about how you guys nearly killed me just now?”

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deadliestbouquet/the-deadliest-bouquet-0/description