Tart Toxic Origins #1

Tart Toxic Origins #1

Scout Comics 2021

Written by Kevin Joseph

Illustrated by Ludovic Sallé

Lettered by DC Hopkins

Tart Acid was once just like them. A frightened soul learning that Hell exists, and that she could play a part in protecting Earth's history from demonic intervention. Now she is the guide for three new recruits, explaining how her band of time traveling demon hunters ended up risking their immortal souls to stand against the forces of Hell. Come along as some of the mysteries of The Toxic Universe are revealed in Tart: Toxic Origins.

This was cute. It’s a double sized I want to say and it contains a lot of information but with the way Kevin tells this is reads like your average book. It has a wonderful flow to it that makes it so easy to read through and it captures your attention and imagination right away and then when the story starts, the story within a story, it’s on and you have trouble putting the book down. It is definitely a well crafted issue that expands the Tart universe beautifully and as an added bonus it is completely new reader friendly so you don’t have to have read anything prior to this but you’ll definitely want to pick up what’s come before after reading this so be prepared for that.

I am enjoying 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 extremely well. The character development through the dialogue, the character interaction and how they act and react to the circumstances and situations that they encounter do a magnificent job in fleshing these characters out. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story we’re caught up in its pull and have a hard time escaping it.

I do appreciate how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story begin to emerge and grow throughout. These layers contain the plot twists and the great bits of characterisation along with the origin of the first Princess of Hell and what they do even if they don’t work with the main arc is add extra depth and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved extremely well.

I am a huge fan of the interiors here. The linework is exceptional and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the detail work is astonishingly well rendered. The way we see the backgrounds in the opening is how I wish we’d see them throughout the book but with the composition of the panels and how we see depth perception, a sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story more than makes up for that. 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 throughout as well. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is done extremely well. I particularly like the shades of red in the demons of hell and how varied the range of reds are, it shows a lot of skill and technique.

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The book is surprisingly tender and emotional when I hadn’t thought that it would be. For someone who was unwanted until she was lost our Princess certainly gets to experience life on Earth for quite a number of years before a search party is sent to retrieve her. I also like the Strawberry hasn’t returned and instead a human baby, Kyu, did come to the sanctuary and whose parentage he is remains to be seen but I have a few guesses in mind. This is a delightful story with great writing, characterisation and wonderfully expressive interiors and it’s perfect for new and longtime readers alike.