Black Magick vol. 2: Awakening II

I was primed to enjoy the setup of “Portland Homicide Detective Who Is Also a Witch” as it was coming from the creative team of Greg Rucka and Nicole Scott.  What I got with the first volume was something that ultimately felt a bit too conventional even with its supernatural trappings.  It takes a while to get there but vol. 2 is ultimately an improvement on the first. After starting off with a flashback to show witch/detective Rowan Black’s coming-of-age ceremony and how it disrupted her life we jump back to the present day to see how she’s dealing with a new kind of awful.  In addition to the growing friction Rowan has with her partner on their current assignment, she finds out that the witch-hunting organization known as Aira may be behind the craziness she and the members of her coven have been dealing with. Aira has its own agenda, though, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the creepy figures that have been hanging around town with their eyes on Rowan.

For much of the volume’s first half, “Black Magick” carries on as the first volume did.  Rucka’s professionalism and Scott’s lovely inkwashed art made the experience a pleasant read, but not a particularly memorable one.  Then at the halfway point Rowan shoots a running suspect in the middle of the street and Aira’s people make their move in a surprisingly subtle way and things start to get interesting.  The fact that this coincides with the introduction of Rowan’s foul-mouthed black cat familiar is probably coincidence. My interest only increased once Aira’s pointman made his intentions clear and we find out just what the creepy people hanging around town are after.  I was honestly invested enough in the goings-on that when I got to the last-page reveal of issue ten that I was relieved to find out that this volume collected the eleventh issue as well. (Yeah, I know that sounds silly but for some reason I thought that this volume only collected issues 6-10.)  So while this series isn’t on par with its creators’ best work, I can at least see how it might find its way there after this volume.