Calum Petrie reviews Titan’s Penny Dreadful…
Featuring Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), Sir Malcom Murray (Timothy Dalton) and Sembene (Danny Sapani) the story recounts the events that led up to the explosive first season of the show. This prequel reveals the terrifying events that led Vanessa to try and find her missing childhood friend, Mina Harker, and exposes the true nature of the vampiric monsters infesting Victorian London.
The events within this 129 page extravaganza fill in a story gap that might just give the less hardcore fans of the series the much needed information they desire. Taking place just before the events that kick off the first series of the TV program, the story focuses around Sir Malcolm Murray and Ms Vanessa Ives alongside some characters that help deliver a pretty comprehensive story in such a short space of time.
The book has an outstandingly beautiful art style which beautifully captures the real life appearances of their on screen personas. The colour scheme follows a very dark and morbid tone, which is to be expected from this series, while using colour very cleverly to highlight significant events.
The story does not contain any dips in quality; instead the whole issue picks up pace at a gradual speed and maintains the readers interest to its conclusion. It focuses on the events of Ives and Murray where their trust and relationship formed, and why they need each other to find Mina. There is a sectionwhere Sir Malcolm reveals where his faith in the supernatural stems from and how he became a believer.
With the number of TV show adaptations to comic stories that are around today, it could be forgiven to write this comic off as a cash in on a big budget TV show. However, it earns its place on the shelf with the TV series, and delivers a profound and unique looks into the origins of a mystery that has brought three seasons of TV to the small screen.
Not quite a must read, but it is probably of most interest to people who are fans of Penny Dreadful; it compliments the TV series and shouldn’t be thought of as a stand alone tale within the universe of the show.
Rating: 8/10
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Originally published March 28, 2017. Updated April 15, 2018.
