The Cold Witch: A Tale of the Shrouded College

Marco Mancini was free of the Shrouded College when he helped Sebastian and Maia in their struggle against the Poor Man.  That help cost him his life and left his wife, Violetta, a widow.  Even if it was working with his friends that got him killed, Violetta knows that it was all due to the Shrouded College and now she wants revenge.  The way she plans on getting it is by freeing the Cold Witch, an ancient mystical entity whose imprisonment won Marco his freedom.  To do this, Violetta is going to have to do some bad things to some powerful people, but that’s never stopped her before from getting what she wants.

This is the third in Charles Soule’s series of interconnected graphic novels and the second one illustrated by Will Sliney.  It’s also the best one so far as it starts to make good on the writer’s promise of each volume being connected to the others yet able to stand on its own terms.  In addition to Sebastian and Maia making a return from the first volume, in more sympathetic form, there are also additional callbacks to the previous stories as well.  We also learn a lot more about the titular organization from the appearance of a legendary 18th century mathematician/astronomer/physicist.

While Soule has clearly created a great framework for telling a particular kind of magical fantasy stories, he has yet to deliver a genuinely good one while using it.  Part of the problem here is that while this is billed as a “John Wick” style revenge story (with zombies), Violetta comes across as more power-mad than actually vengeful given the circumstances of Marco’s death.  Also, the writer has clearly misunderstood the appeal of the film this volume takes its inspiration from as the action here is only serviceable at best as delivered by Sliney.  I’ll admit to being tempted in seeing what further plans Soule has for the Shrouded College, even as my instincts tell me I should just stop reading the stories featuring it now.