REVIEW: Raising Hell with Grimm Spotlight: Hellchild

Half-goddess, half-vampire, and all edge, Angelica Blackstone is back in her first solo appearance since 2016. Grimm Spotlight: Hellchild serves as a reintroduction to the character, pitting the abominable daughter of Hades and Dracula against a brutal crime boss. But does this spotlight deliver on its promise of a bloody good time?

Grimm Spotlight: Hellchild

Sergio Ariño (Artist), Pat Shand (Writer), Igor Vitorino and Grostieta (Cover Artists), Taylor Esposito with Rihanna Bates (Letters), and Robby Bevard (Colors)
Zenescope
January 12, 2022

The cover art features a woman with long red and black hair. She is wearing a black leather outfit and is posed against a nighttime city skyline.

Working as a muscle-for-hire in Los Angeles, Angelica crosses paths with a mystical crime boss named Tor, who uses supernatural means to rule the underworld with unrivaled cruelty. A raid on Tor’s office leaves a grisly trail of henchmen in her wake, but the half-vampire demi-goddess can’t overcome Tor’s powerful blood magic. He brands Angelica with a sigil that inflicts agonizing pain at his command, essentially using it as a magical shock collar.

When Tor promises to remove the brand if Angelica assassinates a rival crime boss in Mexico, she has no choice but to comply. But there’s one catch: the rival boss is a demi-god named Caduceus. Weakened and enchained, Angelica must find a way to kill a fellow demi-god and stop Tor once and for all, pulling out all the stops in one final supernatural beat-down.

Born of a union between the goddess of the underworld and the king of the vampires, Angelica Blackstone is the most perfect distillation of late 90s/early 2000s edginess I’ve seen in years. Her signature black leather pants, jacket, boots, and collar are adorned in all manner of spikes and chains, with barbwire on her forearms for good measure. The pentagram and horned skull on her black crop top tell you everything her red and black striped hair and severe side-cut failed to convey. Hellchild is what would happen if a Hot Topic in 1998 became sentient and tried to fight you in a mall parking lot, and I find it absolutely delightful.

Writer Pat Shand gives Angelica a hard edge through her quippy dialogue and narration. Still, it always feels self-aware enough to keep from becoming overbearing or cheesy. Shand quickly brings the reader up to speed on her origins, personality, and motivations and then lets the story rip. Angelica revels in the darkness as a product of two monstrous bloodlines, neither goddess nor vampire and not at all human. She has no place in any realm and carries no remorse for it. While this leaves her a little one-dimensional given the brevity of the material and the self-contained nature of the story, Angelica is so wholly a monster of her own making that she’s fun to follow.

The issue’s brisk 32 pages are packed with brutal fight sequences and uncompromising gore, and artist Sergio Ariño delivers with confidence from start to finish. Ariño’s characters are bulky with expressive, square-jawed faces and meaty fists. The linework is imbued with a tangible sense of weight and strength in the ways the characters stand as if coiled to strike at any moment. It makes the characters feel powerful even in repose and makes every lunge, strike, or blow feel impactful when in motion. The fight sequences are kinetic and highly satisfying, with well-paced attacks between opponents that are easy to follow even amid arcs of gushing blood or severed limbs flying across the panel. It’s everything I could want from a supernatural slugfest.

If there’s one place where Grimm Spotlight: Hellchild falls flat, it’s in the palette choices of colorist Robby Bevard. In-world interiors and empty panel backgrounds rely heavily on oranges, browns, and reds to fill their spaces, creating a dark and earthy tone. While this limited palette establishes a coherent mood throughout the issue, the choice to use these same tones in the characters’ complexions, clothing, and hair when set against these spaces doesn’t make sense. I often struggle to differentiate between the coppery red of Angelica’s hair from that of gushing blood. The russet of Caduceus’ body as a monstrous demi-god blends into the scenery during the final battle sequence to the point that he merges into the floor he collapses onto when Angelica strikes the killing blow.

It’s disappointing for such clear, well-paced fight sequences to become muddied by the confusing palette. The decision feels like such an easily correctable misstep that the end result comes across as simply careless execution. That’s a shame, but it isn’t enough to hold back an otherwise entertaining story. Grimm Spotlight: Hellchild pulls no punches and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It delivers a hell-raising narrative with a wonderfully wicked protagonist, a nasty attitude, and several buckets of blood.

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Magen Cubed

Magen Cubed

Magen Cubed is a novelist, occasional critic, and general internet menace. Frequently seen hollering about monsters on Twitter.

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