Stillwater #8

Stillwater #8

Skybound/Image Comics 2020

Written by Chip Zdarsky

Illustrated by Ramón K. Perez

Coloured by Mike Spicer

Lettered by Rus Wooton

How do you dispose of a body in Stillwater? Looks like it’s time for Sheriff Tanya to take a road trip.

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This issue focuses on Sheriff Tanya and how she became the sheriff of Stillwater. I love this series and it seems that everyone in town has their own story and there are some that are more complicated than others and Tanya’s certainly qualifies as such. Since we’ve first set foot in Stillwater things haven’t been what they appeared and they continue to showcase the unexpected time and time again. We’ve seen things that engage the readers mind, creativity and imagination in some wondrous ways and more recently the kids of Stillwater having stopped ageing and being in the sixties plus put them in a very unique position as the adults often overlook them and their antics not realising they’ve grown up while still remaining children. Very much like Claudia in Interview With the Vampire whose resentment and anger and never growing up past when she was turned. So yeah what Chip’s been doing with this series as been seriously mindbogglingly brilliant!

I 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. The character development that we we see through the dialogue, the character interaction and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances is really magnificent to see. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story along with the twists & turns along the way we’re left pretty much mouth agape at the turn of events.

I greatly appreciate the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, evolve and strengthen as well as newly emerge depending on the avenues we see and being introduced are sensational. Tanya’s background and how she came to be sheriff and then the ton of characterisation some of which adds to the main arc and those that don’t do serve to add that extra depth and complexity to the book. How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is perfectly achieved.

The interior artwork here is phenomenal to see. The linework is fabulous and how the varying weights and techniques we see being utilised to create the detail work is astonishingly well rendered. Also that we see how different the work is able to create various moods, tones and feels according to day, night or location shows off some series skill and talent on Ramon’s part. That we see backgrounds utilised as we do enhances the moments we see them and they work within the composition within the panels to bring us depth perception, a 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 stupendous eye for storytelling. The colour work is marvellous. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is great to see. I really like that the darkness or light that we see isn’t relevant because the shading and highlights and such remain consistently on point.

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There is a cliffhanger ending here and I cannot wait to see where this is going to lead next. Though lets be honest with how long this town has had this particular affect on its residents I’m surprised that the cracks in folks minds hasn’t happened long before now. All hell is on the verge of breaking loose and it is more exciting now than it was when the series debuted.