A review by literarynessie
Blackbird Volume 1 by Sam Humphries
2.0
Blackbird has a little bit of the City of Bones storyline (family members disappears/gets kidnapped, heroine's memory is wiped, when she remembers she learns her family is part of a secret magical group). Another similarity to another pop culture work I found was when Nina transforms fully into a paragon. The art reminded me of the scenes when Usagi transforms into Sailor Moon. There's also a magical cat that follows her around.
The strength of Blackbird was in the artwork and visuals. It's absolutely stunning.
The weakness of this graphic novel is the storyline. It's full of over-used tropes and it didn't try very hard to subvert them in any way. The whole thing was quite predictable. Not to mention, some of the phrases in the story were repeated over and over.
However, I very much enjoyed some of the characters like Clint. But it turns out I also liked the magic system and the glamour spells, even though the "human world" versus the "magic people world" has also been done so many times.
I felt like there was SO much more potential than we got and I found the storyline a little angsty. I was hoping for a little bit more grittiness. I also feel like Nina could've been more developed as a character. If she had been, it would have strengthened the plot. I don't mind something being tropey if the heroine is more than her 'tragic backstory'. I wanted to her to have goals, wishes, desires beyond her single-minded mission of finding her sister.
Overall, not terrible or bad---the storyline is simply not as particularly exciting as the visuals.
The strength of Blackbird was in the artwork and visuals. It's absolutely stunning.
The weakness of this graphic novel is the storyline. It's full of over-used tropes and it didn't try very hard to subvert them in any way. The whole thing was quite predictable. Not to mention, some of the phrases in the story were repeated over and over.
However, I very much enjoyed some of the characters like Clint. But it turns out
Spoiler
he's a pawn in his father's true plans, which again---using the love interest against the heroine has been done to death.I felt like there was SO much more potential than we got and I found the storyline a little angsty. I was hoping for a little bit more grittiness. I also feel like Nina could've been more developed as a character. If she had been, it would have strengthened the plot. I don't mind something being tropey if the heroine is more than her 'tragic backstory'. I wanted to her to have goals, wishes, desires beyond her single-minded mission of finding her sister.
Overall, not terrible or bad---the storyline is simply not as particularly exciting as the visuals.