The Girls of Dimension 13 #1

The Girls of Dimension 13 #1

Aftershock Comics 2021

Written by Graham Nolan

Illustrated by Bret Blevins

Coloured by Gregory Wright

Lettered by Carlos M. Mangual

Four young women are brought together by a mysterious invitation to live in a creepy building in NYC. They soon learn that the building houses a portal to the other twelve known dimen-sions, and that a malevolent creature known as Abraxis has bound these dimensions togeth-er, enslaving them to his will. For centuries, the portal has been guarded by a gatekeeper to prevent the evil on the other side from gaining access to OUR dimension. Now the gatekeeper, Anna Nightlinger, is missing, and the only thing standing in Abraxis’ way is a quartet of young women with powers and abilities they don’t even know they have…for now.

What a cute little book this is. I like that we’re joining the story as the girls meet each other for the first time and not meeting them as they were scouted by Anna. This allows the reader to use their own imagination based on what we learn and this is how we become engaged in the story that much faster. The opening is great and does precisely what it’s supposed to do and it does it beautifully.

I really like the way that this is being told. The story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. With Abby being the one we meet in the opening it’s obvious that she’s going to be the focal point. The character development that we see here is fantastic and it’s just in the opening stages where we’re getting to know the girls as tey are getting to know each other. It’s great this way actually so that they are kind of blank slates that we’ll see grow as the story continues. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages introducing us to the characters, this world and the story it generates all the right kinds of interest and intrigue.

How we see this being structured with the layers within the story emerging we see a few avenues that will hopefully be explored. It’s a supernatural 20 something golden girls kind of vibe and ya know what it works. I like how everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is extremely nice to see.

I like the interiors here too because they aren’t all-ages and they aren’t super comic book style but it does find its niche in that 20 something kind of range for style and panache. There’s definitely something here that is magical about how we see the work. The linework itself is nice and thanks to its varying weights we see some nice detail work at play which along with the creativity and imagination we see is so much fun. With the house the way it is i’d like to see fewer blank spaces in the backgrounds because that creepy factor is so huge when it’s utilised. Otherwise I really like how we see the composition within the panels and how they bring us depth perception, that sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book, 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 fantastic and I like how we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work.

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This book has so much potential and to see it to such an extent after only a single issue is impressive to me. It means these creators have talent, skill and the knowhow to really put it all together and draw the reader in so that you become almost hypnotised by what we see. Aftershock is home to extraordinary storytelling and this is just another example of that.