Crimson Flower #1

Crimson Flower #1

Dark Horse Comics 2021

Written by Matt Kindt

Illustrated by Matt Lesniewski

Coloured by Bill Crabtree

A brand-new, mind-altering journey through Russian folk tales, trained assassins, and government conspiracies. After losing her family in a violent home invasion, a woman uses folk tales to cope. In a blood-soaked journey toward revenge, she tracks down the man responsible for her family's deaths, only to discover a startling government plot—to weaponize folk tales and use them to raise children into super assassins.

I am beginning to think that Dark House is the house that Kindt built. Not really but his work is so prolifically distributed through them that it almost feels that way right now. I am not going to complain on bit either because the things that this man comes up with, how his mind works and the talent, creativity and audacity that he possesses is beyond human measure. Here we have this take on Russian folk tales which I am going to assume most folks in the Western World are completely unaware of so I am going out on a limb and saying these are passed down to Matt through family, much as they were to me, so to me this is amazingly well told in every facet.

I am a fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. I am very much enjoying how much this has a duality to it that you might not expect right off the bat and yet you have to pay attention to what you are reading or you are going to miss some subtle clues that may help you understand later in the issue. With how this is being structured and how the layers within the story emerge showcases Matt’s talents and to date they keep proving to be more and more impressive. The character development that we see here through the dialogue as well as how the characters act and react to the situations and circumstances continue to make them more complex and interesting. The pacing we see is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing this world, the story and the characters it’s an amazingly weird and wondrous world.

With the way this is being structured we also see how well everything here works together to create the story’s ebb & flow. I love Matt’s work and he continues to impress and amaze me all the time and the continuing diversity that’s being displayed makes me sigh with contemptment.

The interiors here are much different than I had been expecting them to be. They remind me a lot of Plop! and if you don’t understand the reference then you should brush up on your comics history. Trust me this is a very recognisable style of artwork and love it or hate it there is absolutely no denying that it leaves a very strong impression upon the reader. The composition within the panels with and without the use of backgrounds are very interesting to say the least. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show an extremely unique and interesting eye for storytelling. The colour work that we see is really nicely rendered as well. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is delightful.

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Matt’s mind is a wonderful thing and for some odd reason right now i’m thinking about the whole don’t drown your food, in mayo or ketchup or goop. If you can figure out the correlation more power to you but I have to say I certainly wasn’t expecting a ride on the crazy train here but damn do I like it.