Curse of the Gorgon #1 is a comic written by Brian Hawkins with art by Jeferson Sadzinski and colors by Antonio Ramos Wong. A history professor’s body has an additional inhabitant: Medusa. This is a supernatural comic with mystery elements, drama, and sexiness. The leading lady for this tale is Mandisa Jones, she is a history professor at the local community college and she recently overcame a deadly illness. She is currently being investigated by a detective who thinks she is behind the recent turning of men to stone. The story begins with the detective in question following Mandisa to a bar where she heads to the bathroom and gets busy with a guy. A terrified scream forces the investigator to find out what exactly is going on. The violence is focused on objects rather than people. There are some sexual moments here. The pacing is steady with a noir-lite, mysterious tone. The intensity is brought about by violence, danger, and eroticism. The dialogue is mostly conversational with decent back-and-forth and narration provided by the detective. There are no word-heavy pages here. This is a debut issue that is dripping in drama and sensuality with a cast of interesting characters and a mystery to solve on multiple fronts.

            The art here is smoothly detailed and drawn in a modern style with well-done shading. The color range is realistically wide with a nice variety on each page. Scenery as a whole is rare and what we do see is of skyscrapers as this takes place in Washington D.C., primarily indoors. The places visited here are bars, homes, a police station, and a college. All these different areas give off the expected atmosphere. The backgrounds tend to show the surroundings with gradient colors being very rare. The expression level here is high as these characters wear their emotions on their sleeves. Some of the looks we’ll see are angry, seductive, annoyed, happiness, sadness, and frustration. The faces can seem a bit too smooth at time but they have a good amount of detail which leads to all the expressions coming across well. The violence involves destruction of objects with no blood or gore shown. The action scenes come in bursts and flow well but are somewhat rare.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like supernatural stories that star a black woman and deal with Greek mythology and feature drama, mystery, and sexiness then this is for you.

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

R. Nudity, sexual situations.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“…she had something to do with it.”

 

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brianlouisiam/curse-of-the-gorgon-1-a-mythical-thriller/description

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

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 28

Violent Pages: 2, for 7% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 4, for 14% of the comic

 

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

 

Violence Level – 2

“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 – 1

“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 – 4

“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.”