The Ribbon Queen

Garth Ennis wrote a miniseries a few years back called “A Walk Through Hell.”  It was meant to come off as a horror series about the problems society was (and still is) experiencing, but the only thing he managed to successfully convey through it was his utter despondence at the current state of humanity.  Now he’s back for Round Two as we get a miniseries about an ancient force looking to help a modern woman extract some righteous vengeance, and the female cop who gets caught in the middle.

NYPD Detective Amy Sun has just shown up at her captain’s office with some news that’s about to ruin everyone’s day.  It’s about one Bella Rhinebeck, a young woman who was saved from a serial killer’s clutches by a police tactical squad and its heroic leader.  She’s just turned up dead and Amy has reason to believe that the squad’s leader may have been responsible.  Before her investigation can really get started, and go bad, the guilty party is brought to violent and bloody justice in a way that no one could have imagined.

It’s a way that gives artist Jacen Burrows a chance to show off his skills rendering ultraviolence from his old days at Avatar, while the rest of the volume shows how good he is in rendering straightforward emotional drama.  Arguably too good as “The Ribbon Queen” falls into the same trap that ruined the aforementioned “A Walk Through Hell” for me.  This is a story all about highlighting particular ills of society – bad cops, men who think they run the world, the helplessness of women and the double-standards they’re bound to – that simply seeks to raise your awareness of them.  Not to help you cope with their existence or show you a path forward for dealing with them.

One wonders if Ennis regrets how he’s written so many manly, male-centric series over the years and feels a certain amount of regret about it to the point where he’s felt compelled to write these series specifically spotlighting the above-mentioned issues.  If he does, then he needs to get better at it.  “The Ribbon Queen” is certainly a competently-told story, but it’s not a very scary one, nor does it inspire anything resembling hope in the reader after having read it.  It’s something that leaves you despairing at the way things are, lamenting your inability to change anything.  Which means it’s of more service to anyone who doesn’t think things should, or need to change.