Dominique Laveau, Voodoo Child: Requiem, Chapter #1 -- Selwyn Hines, Denys Cowan, and John Floyd

Four months after Hurricane Katrina, Dominique Laveau is with a group of her college friends, working on a rebuilding project in New Orleans.

While she's out getting supplies, all of her Tulane friends get slaughtered and she somehow scares off a giant wolf-beast (who I assume did the slaughtering) with some flying snakes that come from... somewhere, she yells, "What is happening to me?", and I was like, "RIGHT?"

Turns out, the hurricane destroyed the fragile peace between the "loa, loup garou, vampire, witch hunter and houngan". And somehow, Dominque Laveau, grad student, is caught smack-dab in the middle of all of it.

So she goes looking for answers at the tomb of Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen...

Artwork? Whoa boy, gory. Lots of intestines. And beheadings. If you are easily squicked out, this probably isn't the book for you.

Beyond that, I liked the scenery far more than the people. There's one panel where Chancellor Malenfant's face looks like a piece of paper that's been crumpled up, which was cool, but mostly, the faces didn't do a whole lot for me. I liked that when Dom has her vision of/visit to the past, she's all in shades of green—which made it visually clear that she was invisible.

Storyline/writing? The narration is supposed to sound dark and foreboding and literary and New Orleans-y (and, I suspect, the author was shooting for Morgan Freeman Voice), but... it didn't work for me. At all. The similes go on so long that it all ends up feeling overblown and like someone is trying way, way too hard. Like this:

Families... They chip hate like metal flakes off old vieux carré ironwork... spread them till that rust saturate the air, stain the lungs, corrupt the soul... till, at the end, that hate leave a body wore out, dying, or stuck in some cold place in between.

There was a random gunfight shoehorned into the story that appeared to be there as a way to A) introduce Dom's cop boyfriend and, B) give a reason for them to get split up again. Which felt awkward.

Then, after Dom falls into the Court of the Voodoo Queen, she's clearly sure that she's having a vision—she says (she has that annoying soap opera habit of talking to herself to let the reader know what her thought process is), "What are you showing me? Where are you showing me?"—but THEN, like, a PAGE later, she's surprised when the dude in the olde-fashioned-y clothes can't see her, and she starts wondering if she's gone round the bend. Which felt inconsistent.

Keep going? It's possible that it was just suffering from Pilot Episode Awkwardness, but I'm going to skip the next one.