Highly enjoyable and engaging supernatural story. Three young friends, Tristan, Wyatt and Andi are playing with the snow, while another boy is making snowmen. He wants to be a wizard and appears to have a book of spells. When animated and distinctly dangerous snowmen appear Tristan, Wyatt and Andi have a sizeable fight on their hands.
Jethro Morales has written an all ages comic that respects its readers of all ages enough to support the key requirements of an supernatural adventure. The threat has to be severe enough to actually present a problem, the solution should arise from smart thinking not just brute force. The story delivers on both, the snowmen are the right side of nasty and they are the prelude to a distinctly more menacing problem. The three children are brave and resourceful, they work together and the way the solve the problem is smart and entirely credible in terms of the story.
The cast are swiftly and economically introduced and are never generic suburban children, they have strong expressive personalities, no one dominates, all have a substantial part to play. Adults exist but are not around to rescue anyone, the children have to solve and save themselves. The art is friendly and very engaging, the context moves from being safe to with deft confidence. The snowmen are great, the first wave are malicious snowmen, the next version is clearly a different order. The action is fast, has weight and impact and is never gory. The story does not need gore, just enough fear, courage, bravado and smart thinking to pull the reader in.
The colouring is great, it gives edge and weight to the details of the art and highlights the strangly burning glow in the snowmen to excellent effect.
The lettering quietly and subtly amplifies the nuances of the writing, the tonal shifts are indicated without being forced, the sound effects are nicely loud and crunchy.
It takes very considerable skill to get the balance right in a story like this, Jerome Morales makes it look easy and natural. A great fun read.
