Snatched #1

Snatched #1

Scout Comics 2021

Written by Sheldon Allen

Illustrated by Mauricio Campetella

Coloured by Warnia Sahadewa

Lettered by Matt Bowers

From the favelas of Central America, all the way to the scalp of your favorite A-List actress or IG Crush (you know the one I'm talking about), Snatched is a hardcore voyage into the bloody, treacherous, violent, unfiltered, uncompromising, and always unforgiving world of human hair trafficking. Following three parallel storylines, Snatched examines how racism, misogyny, and unchecked capitalism lead the pursuit of one of the world's most visible and lucrative, yet unspoken commodities: hair weave. If you thought the drug game was deadly, wait until you see what goes down in the hair trade.

When I saw the title for this one I assumed it had something to do with someone being snatched off the street and it would be a whole revenge scenario kind of story. Lo and behold I didn’t know how wrong I would be. Then the opening happened and I thought it was a story about drugs, oh boy I love that Sheldon is able to keep using misdirection throughout the story. Because of the nature of the story and the way that this is being told I was riveted from the first page to the last.

I really love 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. Just how the scenes transition from one to another as the players in this drama are introduced and we see the motivations behind what they do is so intensely portrayed and it just grips you like you’re in a vice. The character development that we see is beyond amazing and between the dialogue and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter speaks volumes about who they are. The pacing is sensational and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story, introducing this world and these characters it keeps so intensely focused on the page.

I Like how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story that tie in so intrinsically to the characterisation and story development. That everything has that interconnectedness to is so wonderfully pulled together. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how this moves the story forward was flawlessly executed.

The interiors here are incredible. The linework that we see is pretty amazing and how the varying weights and techniques are being utilised to bring out this level of detail work is stupendous. I am one of those folks who wants to see as many backgrounds utilised within the panels as possible to really enhance the moments. What we see here is solid, there’s a good amount being thought of and how they work within the composition of the panels to create our depth perception, sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story is beautifully rendered. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a super talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is phenomenal! How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is really spectacular to see. I also really like the blending or gradation effects we see from how the light sources are utilised.

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This is so much better than I ever could have imagined it to be. These guys really took a concept and went bold and daring with it. They packed in the information without it feeling like its too much or that they glossed over anything. This is an intelligently written story with a variety of characters and some absolutely lovely interiors that makes one of those must have reads of the week.