Kill Whitey Donovan

Anna Hoyt was living the easy life as a surgeon’s daughter in the South during the Civil War.  That all came to an end when her sister committed suicide.  Once Anna found out the reason for that, she had only one thing on her mind:  Killing the man responsible, Whitey Donovan.  The problem is that while Anna may know a little medicine, she is not very wise in the ways of the world outside of her family’s plantation.  Which is why she recruits one of her family’s slaves, Hattie Virgil, with the promise of freedom if she helps her out.  Hattie has known enough white people to be skeptical of Anna’s offer, but when the slavemaster’s dogs come after them, they’ve got no choice now but to throw in their lots together.

I hadn’t heard of writer Sydney Duncan or artist Natalie Barahoma before reading this comic.  What got my attention was the promise of an over-the-top revenge tale as these two women cut a swath through the Civil War-era South on the hunt for the title character..  That’s not quite what I got here as the pacing of this five-issue miniseries left something to be desired.  Most of this miniseries is made up of adventures the girls have while doing anything but tracking down Whitey.  There’s also the fact that, even though he’s at the center of this story, almost no effort is made to build up the title character’s villainy until the very end.  All this results in a climax that feels like the creators were just ambling along until they realized, “Oh yeah, we have to have our protagonists kill Whitey Donovan.”

That’s not to say that there isn’t anything to like about this miniseries.  Barhoma’s art is always pleasant to look at and captures the feel of the era quite well.  There are even some nicely atmospheric scenes like the shootout by the train in a thunderstorm.  She’s also good at selling how Duncan has Hattie play up her “ignorant slave” act to fool dumb white guys, usually before she cracks their skulls open.  It’s bits like these that left me feeling that “Kill Whitey Donovan” was still a good idea, just that it’s central story needed more focus for it to be worth someone’s time.