Monstress vol. 4: The Chosen

That guy in the center of the cover for this volume certainly looks sinister, doesn’t he?  Like he’s just sitting there advertising to everyone who cares to look that he’s the new villain of this series.  That’s not an incorrect assumption to make. The thing is that The Doctor has a very personal connection to our protagonist, Maika Halfwolf, and he really wants to be a part of her life.  Maika would do well to heed him, since he’s the head of the warmasters that gather under the heading of the Blood Court, and something of a scientist. The kind of scientist that has made a career out of studying the Old Gods and is very interested in Zinn, the one who lives beneath Maika’s skin.  He’s not completely without heart, however. In order to get what he wants, he’s willing to give our protagonist what she does: The traitorous nekomancer Ren, and the fox-girl Kippa… though the latter might be showing up kind of late after making friends with ancient dracul.

The dance between The Doctor and Maika drives the action in this volume, so it’s a good thing that writer Marjorie Liu is good at teasing out the tangled and tortured nuances of their relationships.  My main gripe here is that she and artist Sana Takeda are being extremely heavy-handed as portraying him as some kind of villain. Really, whenever he shows up I can’t help but think, “Hey, bad guy comin’ thru!” before I’m able to focus on what he’s actually saying.  Still, Takeda’s art is amazing to behold as usual and the stuff happening around the edges of the main plot is pretty engaging too. All these little things help further the worldbuilding of “Monstress” in a way that ties it to characters that we like. Which is a good thing since the drums of war are beating ever louder here and I’d like for all of them to make it out of coming conflict alive.  It probably won’t happen, but I’d still like to see it.