SPN tie-in comics

[ratcreature]

Not exactly a reprieve from the comic posts, but it's about the Supernatural comics, so no people wearing their bright underwear on the outside! :D

Supernatural: Origins #1-3 (written by Peter Johnson, art by Matthew Dow Smith)

First, I like that the art doesn't try for photographic likeness, because that is really hard to pull off well in tv tie-in comics, i.e. far too often the likeness is mangled and/or the drawings look stiff. So I'm fine with the art being stylized. One major problem is though that the artist doesn't seem to be able to draw small children. Baby!Sam in particular just looks really, really odd. Also the coloring doesn't always work for me.

As for the story, I'm not sure how I feel about this version of John's early hunting days. I liked the start and how he tries to find answers from the authorities, has to deal with opposition to his "quest" from his relatives, and then stumbles upon Missouri, but I was less thrilled that he hooks up with the other hunter and does some kind of apprenticeship road trip, apparently. I quite liked the idea that he figures things out on his own while becoming a hunter. Also I found the way he disposes of his brother-in-law's corpse after he is killed problematic. I mean sure that other hunter urges him that he needs to avoid more attention and another strange death connected to him, but especially with a supernatural dog attack he could still have explained the death as caused by wild dogs or something, rather than just to dispose of him in some car. And I wondered about him bringing Sam and Dean to the Roadhouse too, because on the show, iirc, Dean doesn't remember. Granted, in the comic Dean is only five or so, so he could have forgotten, but still. Despite this I'm finding the series mostly entertaining so far, even if I would have preferred for John to start hunting on his own.

Comments

[merryish.livejournal.com]

This is good to know! I keep almost picking these up, but I'm way more interested in Sam and Dean than I am in John. Do we actually see much of them, or are they just sort of tagging along? I mean, I know Sam's a baby, but...?

[ratcreature]

So far it's mostly about John, but there've been glimpses of um, what's the opposite of flashbacks? flashforwards? set later exploring Sam and Dean's reaction to John's hunting lifestyle when they are older, e.g. in the first issue was a short backup story about Sam and Dean as teenagers, and the events of the third issue are framed by a sequence taking place 1991. But so far we don't see much of them. Though we do see some effects the hunting has on little Dean, like his reaction to his John moving them and leaving them with others, and in the third issue he sees John shooting a shapeshifter (who looks like one of the hunters with whom John went since that is the form he took) and is further traumatized by that.