Monstress

Maika and her friends face betrayal and death, and only the monster inside-and her growing relationship with it-can save them. MONSTRESS will return in August.

Maika struggles with the monster inside.

Maika’s world becomes even more dangerous.

Maika must confront the deadly secrets that live inside her.

Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s “Monstress” #4 opens with a bloody execution. Despite Takeda’s solid perspective choices and action lines, this cinematic opening feels flat because it’s an overused, manipulative way to grab the reader’s attention, as the stakes and motivations of the characters are not yet known. However, the storytelling improves in both subtlety and ingenuity in later scenes. Liu’s exposition makes a point of avoiding information dumps, but one of the tradeoffs is that she often requires the reader to work harder. The second scene requires the reader to slow down and absorb the existence of and context for yet another set of characters, but it repays the reader’s attention with rapid world building. Liu introduces the Queen of Wolves and her court, sketches out the position of the Dusk Court and reveals a secret about the fall of Constantine. The military calculations and courtly machinations feel real, and Takeda’s lush details immediately give the setting and the