āThe Colony of the Damned: Part 1ā review
By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor
1/5
October is the perfect time to let our inner horror fiends out. In what has now become Comic Corner tradition, I have decided to spend this month seeing what the horror genre of the graphic novel world has to offer. Unfortunately, this first outing was far from ideal.
The Colony of the Damned is both written and drawn by Rhino Rinaldi. It focuses on the old ghost story of Roanoke. For those of you unfamiliar, Roanoke was an English colony in the late 1500s. What makes it famous is that one day, every settler that lived there just up and vanished. A hearty feat, considering that according to records, over 100 people called Roanoke home, and not one of them was ever seen again. The only clue was the word ācroatoanā carved into a post. No one knows what the word means, or what happened to the people, so naturally the old story has inspired some fairly radical creative interpretations.
Sadly, Rinaldiās work is not one of the better ones. The Colony of the Damned would be right at home between the pages of an emo teenagerās sketchbook. The story offers nothing new, and instead seems to be focused on offending the right-wing as much as possible instead of presenting a cohesive plot.
The art is highly detailed, but lacks polish. The anatomy seems stiff, and the entirety of the book is left in pencil with light sources not even registering as necessary. Overall, the art looks unfinished and messy, which is upsetting because the bare bones of something good are thereāit just needs that extra TLC of some ink, or a bit of colour to really take it to that dark place that Rinaldi was trying to hit.
Needless to say, I will not be picking up Part 2 of this series, and I wonāt be recommending it to anyone to add to their October reading list.
