She is…Black Dahlia #1 is a comic written by Carlos Raphael with art & lettering by Oliver Dela Cruz and colors by Jeff Carbajosa. Dahlia goes on the warpath after narrowly avoiding death. This is an aggressive military-focused comic with superheroine elements, heavy combat, and crime-laced drama. The leading lady for this tale is Dahlia, real name Valeria De Leon. She had a rough and violent childhood and as an adult she’s joined the US Army and has been deployed to the Middle East. She has a short temper and is quick to jump into action, sometimes without thinking first. Sergeant Felix is her superior and she has a number of boisterous and aggressive comrades. This story begins with Dahlia and her fellow soldiers playing dangerous games and drinking. One of the men starts telling the others a story about Dahlia and the big mistake she made on a recent mission. This comic will shift back and forth between child and adult Dahlia. The action is fiery and explosive with heavy gore and a decent bit of blood. The pacing is slow and it is confusing as scenes can feel disjointed and unconnected. This has the tone of an action movie with strong military vibes. This is very dramatically and violently intense. The dialogue is mostly spoken with good back-and-forth and spurts of Spanish. There is some informative narration and we’ll occasionally see Dahlia’s thoughts. There are a lot of word-heavy pages and thick text bubbles. This is a compelling and intriguing debut issue that stars a lead character with a troubled past who likes to dive headfirst into violent and dangerous situations.

            The art here is drawn in a smoothly detailed modern style with notable lighting and shading. There is an inconsistent level of sharpness with some pages being blurry. The color palette here is realistic with a lot of military-standard tones. For scenery we have long and dry stretches of desert as well as some green shots of thick forest. There isn’t a central location as this story moves all over the place from the Middle East to military bases to schools, alleys, and the streets of a US city. The backgrounds usually show the surroundings from ruined buildings to sunsets with the stylized look for intense scenes. The expression level here is high as these characters tend to have strong reactions to the varied situations. Emotions are all over the place from fear, shock, and anger, to annoyance, confusion, and sinister happiness. The faces tend to be very detailed down to the teeth and they occasionally get animated which results in the different expressions being easy to decipher most of the time. Firearms are the most common weapon along with knives, axes, and pure physicality. There are many gruesome attacks that lead to heavy gore and decent amount of blood. The action scenes tend to come in multi-page bursts with high panel counts and a generally unconfusing flow though one fight might throw you off.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes, if this is up your alley.

“Would I like this?”

If you like military superheroine stories that star a Hispanic woman and features heavy violence, thick crime-focused drama, and aggression then this is for you.

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

R. Gruesomeness, gore, blood.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“Abuela Juana, he had it coming.”

 

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/championcomicsgroup/she-isblack-dahlia/description

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 25

Violent Pages: 12, for 48% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 0, for 0% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 3

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 5

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 2

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 1

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”