Publisher: Dynamite
Writer: Jai Nitz
Artist: Jose Malaga, Greg Smallwood
Release Date: 11th December 2013

Every comic, so the story goes, could be someone’s first ever comic reading experience. So it is incumbent on the creators of a comic book to ensure that the story reads just as well for those who have only just discovered the title as it does for long time readers. Despite this maxim, and despite the fact this is the first issue of Grimm – The Warlock, this book is nigh on incomprehensible.

Based on an American TV show I have no knowledge of (outside of its surface level similarities with Bill Willingham’s Fables) this comic is alienating in the extreme. Jai Nitz’ clumsy dialogue awkwardly drops in terminology I assume comes from the TV show, with references to Lowens and Wesens that mean nothing to me. Worst of all none of these references are adequately explained, by the end of the comic I wasn’t sure what the hell a Lowen is: a werewolf or a type of Grimm? An enemy of Wesens? Who bloody knows.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, the story is bizarrely mundane. When there are Lowens and Wesens doing whatever the hell it is they do it seems anti-climactic to base the first issue around a basketball match. The story is pretty uninspired and the final panel reveal is frankly laughable. Unfortunately for the reader, the art is possibly worse than the story. Stilted and stiff looking, characters look like they’ve been posed, with no sense of dynamism or movement, and facial expressions on characters all look pretty much the same. Characters seem to have either big cheesy grins, startled wide eyes, or worst of all a weird and unsettling combination of the two. If Grimm – The Warlock was my first comic book, it may well also have been my last. It’s all a bit, well, grim to be honest.

Rating: 3/10.

The writer of this piece was: Joe Morrison
Joe is Freelance film journalist based in Glasgow.
You can also find Joe on Twitter.