Pretty Deadly

1. I read the first two issues of Pretty Deadly. I found the story a bit hard to follow, but the art was so beautiful I had to keep reading. I think it's a story I'll have to read a couple times to understand. There were a lot of plot threads going on, like the vulture girl and the blind man, the daughter of death, and the woman with white hair going after her.

I found the color design and the line work especially effective in telling the story. The brushstrokes describe the action that the characters are doing and makes you feel the intensity of the environment and the moments they are in. The artist also knew the psychology of color and each "scene" in the comic is given a color scheme that evokes a mood. The sex scene had bright pink and warm reds, the fight scenes used an intense red and orange color scheme, and scenes that depicted isolation in the snow used stark whites. Even if I didn't understand all the details of what was going on, I could understand the emotion.

2. The elements of the story that I was able to connect with were the themes of discovering who you are, who you're meant to be, and the nature of death. The other day, my counselor and I were doing a guided meditation exercise where I imagined death as a person and described it. I really loved the character design of death in this comic. It was different than what I imagined the day before, but there was still familiar elements to it, such as the black outfit. I also loved the animal skull. The characterization also felt similar because death in this comic doesn't show emotion on his face, but he still has deep feelings of love and loyalty. Every character is tied to him and his story, and they can't escape his influence on their lives.

3. If I was adapting this story to a different medium, I would adapt it to a TV mini series and have each of the first episodes introduce a different character. Then it would all culminate into the moments where all the characters meet each other. It is a shorter story than what is usually adapted from comics into television, such as the Walking Dead, but even the Walking Dead took the outline of its source material and branched out into different characters and stories. The mythology of Pretty Deadly feels so rich that I think it could be expanded upon. For example, I found the parts where they were in the land of the dead so beautiful, but it's not a huge part of the comic. I'm debating if it would be a live action show or an animated show. Maybe it could be a rotoscoped show with the same style of brush linework. I like the idea of it being rotoscoped because the subject matter is so mythological yet feels so connected to reality.