Kastor #1 is a comic written by Uni Bowen & Monique Dixon with art and lettering by Michael Oppenheimer. Two women deal with the supernatural but things are starting to get out of hand. This is an action-filled story with splashes of humor and some great art. Our leading ladies for this tale are Uni and Monique, two friends who work together to take down evil creatures. Uni is a retail employee with the occasional work troubles and Monique seems to be in the medical field. We do meet some other interesting characters that may appear again down the road. The story starts with Uni running into otherworldly problems which leads to her needing some assistance. Things get violent pretty fast and it stays that way throughout. It has a light amount of blood relative to the action. The intensity is high and we can feel the desperation and urgency of the leads to get the job done. The dialogue is pretty modern with some great conversations and back-and-forths. No wordy pages here. This is a very good debut for a comic that provides us with high stakes, likable characters, and unanswered questions.

            The art here has a roughish, gritty-lite look that has a nice focus on the smaller details. It has the atmosphere of a thriller/horror movie and a good amount of but most of them have a darker tone. This story takes place in New York and has two main locations: A retail store and a park near the water. The characters here are very expressive sporting a new look nearly every panel. The faces have a bunch of detail from the eyes to the lips which helps the looks come across perfectly. There might be some very light face sameness for a couple background characters but you might not notice. The creatures look like horror monsters you’ll have seen before but I won’t spoil what those are. Some of the weapons used are bats and blades along with some specialty items. The action scenes move well and have slight moments of calm to help you keep up. There is some blood and a bit of gore.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like supernatural stories starring black women dealing with evil and attempting to just get though the day this is for you.

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

PG-13 or R. Blood and a bit of gore.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“I should have just called out today.”

 

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kastor/kastor/description

Unboxing Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcMloblCyR0

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

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 22

Violent Pages: 9, for 41% 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 – 4

“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.”