Villordsutch reviews Big Dog Ink’s Ursa Minor #1…
“Werewolves become assassins, vampires help humanity and the United States has become a paranoid mockery of what was once a great nation. How can one girl make any difference in this horrific world…”
My first review from publishers Big Dog Ink and I’m rather interested to see what they have to deliver. Having no previous knowledge what so ever of Ursa Minor (and not being privy to the specials released before) I stumbled in rather oblivious to who does what and what is actually going on.
From what I could glean from the Word Wide Web is that on National Television the United States President was assassinated by a werewolf. People of the world become paranoid about their neighbours as the supernatural world is brought into the light, and then the saviours of humanity arrive, vampires! Together they begin to remove all the lycanthropes and they start with the Werebears (I kid you not). Now one of the last remaining (if not the last) remaining Werebears, called Naomi, is on her own private mission to destroy all of the vampires.
All of the above I wasn’t aware of when I initially read Ursa Minor and I was left wondering what was actually going on and where our protagonist was. Not a good way to feel on my first read and it was due to this lack of information I ended up on the web, which helped me a stitch quite a bit together; the story begins to take shape and my protagonist appears. The comic is rather good but I would have preferred Tom Hutchinson (writer) to perhaps have not used the material so heavily from special releases for the #1 issue as it left gaps in the opening story and a lack of required knowledge for what, to me, should be a genesis story.
This comic is vicious. From the word go we are hit with a real nasty opening with the Werewolves are making a mess of the Vampire congregation at the beginning of the comic; flesh is torn, hearts ripped out, limbs removed – if you like the colour red then these panels are for you. From here we are dropped into a bloodletting restaurant for vampires, as a human victim or could be willing participant is cut to feed two sexually charged female vampires and finally we meet our heroine, currently playing the role of a honey trap in a vampire bar; when the trap is closes it gets rather messy. The Werebear looks fantastic and the damage she brings down upon the vampire makes you wince, and to know that our coarse haired punisher came from a svelte young woman gives you an internal smile when you think of the comic’s name. Both Ian Snyder and Nei Ruffino have gone to town with this opening issue showing off their talents as artists for the comic world to see, with the issue looking fantastic and gruesome at exactly the same time.
If sex, violence and the supernatural is your bag then this here is your comic. If it isn’t you’ll still enjoy it.
Villordsutch likes his sci-fi and looks like a tubby Viking according to his children. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.
Originally published October 24, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
