Book Report: Serenity Rose Volume 2

The next Meccanica's going up tonight, I promise, but before I did, I wanted to talk about an awesome webcomic that finally getting the print treatment. More than a year ago I mentioned Aaron Alexovich's then-newly kick-started comic Serenity Rose, back online after almost four years. At the time, it was updating at only a page a week, but after nearly a year and a half, the 122 page comic is complete and hitting the presses.
So what's it about?



In Alexovich's comic, being a witch isn't a lifestyle choice. It's something you're born as, and being such a rare genetic anomaly gets you attention whether you like it or not. Serenity Rose, America's youngest witch, has a special level of infamy after hijacking a schoolbus as a teenager. After the ensuing televised scandal, she's become a recluse in her little Salem-esque town of Crestfallen. The second volume picks up when Serenity, about to begin an apprenticeship with witch/rockstar Vicious Whisper, realizes that her dreams are manifesting themselves in the woods, attacking hikers, and attracting the bad kind of attention.



I love a good worldbuilding exercise, and my god, does Alexovich do that well. The world in Serenity Rose is almost - but not quite - like our own, tweaked by the subtle presence of the supernatural. And the town in which our protagonist lives, as well as its sordid history, is laid out in just enough detail to want us to learn more about it. The story's told really well, too - though one thing new readers should keep in mind is that the volume does not stand entirely on its own, referring to enough characters and events in the first volume to leave a few mystified. Don't let that discourage you, though, most of the blanks are easy enough to fill in by yourself.



Another thing that should be pointed out is the amazing strides Alexovich has taken in art over the last few years. I've been alive long enough to see my favorite webcomic artists make astonishing leaps in terms of the quality of their artwork, and it's so rewarding to see the results. Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade is a great example of this; Dr. McNinja's Chris Hastings is another. Alexovich definitely belongs in this category. If you find his pages from the very first volume of SR and compare them to his newest stuff, it's flabbergasting. His rich atmospheric charcoal drawings (peppered with flecks of vibrant color) have aquired a level of sophistication that comes with experience, but even his storytelling has a more mature aspect to it. The fact that Alexovich can also tell a compelling, unique story with nearly-all-female leads is also heartening in a medium that still has so few interesting heroines.



As I rule, I tend not to purchase books of content freely available online (I make an exception for Achewood), but I might reconsider this Christmas if the print version of Goodbye Crestfallen looks as gorgeous as the jpegs have for the last year and a half. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and read the volume from the beginning.

Instrumental