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St. Mercy #1

Top Cow Productions

By Steven LeitmanPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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St. Mercy #1

Top Cow Productions 2021

Written by John Zuur Platten

Illustrated by Atilio Rojo

Lettered by Troy Peteri

A tale of vengeful retribution, ST. MERCY pits the Incan Empire against the American West—and features two strong, determined young women who must defy authority and ultimately embrace their destiny. Mercedes Oro is one of the surviving descendants of the Incans who has been charged with protecting a cache of cursed gold used in their child sacrifice rituals. But when an outlaw tries to steal the gold for his band of thieves, he unknowingly sets events in motion that will unleash an angry god who is willing to travel through the centuries to have what he desires.

What a delightful introduction to a story this is. I love that we see such a strong young woman, well she’s still a child so girl, in Toctollissica. She is confident and yet insecure and like all of us full of those contradictions that make her a complex human being whom we enjoy seeing. She is surrounded by men, men who hold power and abuse that power in the name of a god and it’ll be interesting to see how this continues to play out over the course of the story. Also just the fact that this centre’s on the Inca is an automatic crowd pleaser to me because we just don’t see this enough.

I am very much enjoying the way that we see this 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. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter. I’m incredibly impressed with the level of characterisation we see within these pages. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages introducing the story, the characters and this world we’re left captivated by these events.

I like how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story begin to emerge, grow and strengthen. There are several arcs happening simultaneously here and each one adds depth, dimension and complexity to the story in their own ways. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is beautifully achieved.

I am gobsmacked by the work we see on the interiors here. The linework is exquisite and how the varying weights and techniques are being utilised to create this level of detail in the work that we see is astonishing. I don't know what it is about what we see here but by golly the work is strong and powerful and it almost feels like the eyes watch you no matter where you go. The composition of the page layouts makes up for the lack of backgrounds though what we do see is well executed as they enhance and expand the moments beautifully. We get nice depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is brilliantly rendered. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows an amazing eye for how colour works and how to maximise its effects.

There are so many interesting takes on the gods of different cultures and yet we hardly see any of those from the South American peoples so this is a refreshing change of pace. With some amazingly complex writing and characterisation along with these stunning interiors this will engage your mind, creativity and imagination beautifully.

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About the Creator

Steven Leitman

Just me talking about the comics I enjoy reading, ones that you might not know exist and spotlighting the indie creators that excite me.

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