Scan barcode
A review by mattsitstill
Semiautomagic by Alex de Campi
3.0
Alice Creed would be everyone’s favorite Princeton professor, that is if she ever bothered to show up for class. Instead, she moonlights as a private detective dealing in supernatural circumstances and monster hunting. Obviously, this really eats into her lecture time. “Semiautomagic” collects the first two stories of the weird investigative serial from Alex De Campi and Jerry Ordway, offering up enough elements of the genre to satisfy fans of eldritch horror.
If Alex De Campi has one major modus operandi, it’s telling classic horror stories with an awareness of modern technology. I don’t know if I would say she completely embraces the technology: after all, the events in “Semiautomagic” are triggered after a boy downloads a torrent of a fake video game and gets his soul sucked away. But she’s aware of it, her characters aren’t averse to it, and its incorporation does help her stories feel more grounded and centered. Alice Creed, for instance, isn’t too far removed from a classic monster hunter like Van Helsing. She’s burying tragedies of her past in her current work, she’ll drop everything to take care of weird occurrences across the country, her investigative prowess is meticulous and thorough, and the people around her tend to suffer. She just knows how to use an iPad and speak in a manner that gamers in forums can understand.
Nothing in “Semiautomagic” is unexpected or surprising. It works mostly because the storytelling is so functional and precise. De Campi crafts her scenes to be short and snappy. She makes sure we get enough about Alice Creed to understand her motivations and ultimate goals. Her knowledge and capabilities are confronted from the start by the slew of monsters and wicked creatures. I do think some character elements were introduced suddenly as the story got underway, but I’d chalk that up to De Campi discovering new information about the character when constructing the initial serial. Ordway’s presentation might feature some chaotic and unnecessary panel compositions — he stacks his frames haphazardly and without regard for any rhythm and his staging sometimes runs over-dramatic, like when Alice Creed arrives at the airport — but he does well with staging the book, with leading us through the sets. His characters interact with the environments and don’t feel like they just sort of sit on the scenery. He takes off when the story calls for weird and bizarre imagery, providing some fun horror drawings.
Read the rest of my review at
If Alex De Campi has one major modus operandi, it’s telling classic horror stories with an awareness of modern technology. I don’t know if I would say she completely embraces the technology: after all, the events in “Semiautomagic” are triggered after a boy downloads a torrent of a fake video game and gets his soul sucked away. But she’s aware of it, her characters aren’t averse to it, and its incorporation does help her stories feel more grounded and centered. Alice Creed, for instance, isn’t too far removed from a classic monster hunter like Van Helsing. She’s burying tragedies of her past in her current work, she’ll drop everything to take care of weird occurrences across the country, her investigative prowess is meticulous and thorough, and the people around her tend to suffer. She just knows how to use an iPad and speak in a manner that gamers in forums can understand.
Nothing in “Semiautomagic” is unexpected or surprising. It works mostly because the storytelling is so functional and precise. De Campi crafts her scenes to be short and snappy. She makes sure we get enough about Alice Creed to understand her motivations and ultimate goals. Her knowledge and capabilities are confronted from the start by the slew of monsters and wicked creatures. I do think some character elements were introduced suddenly as the story got underway, but I’d chalk that up to De Campi discovering new information about the character when constructing the initial serial. Ordway’s presentation might feature some chaotic and unnecessary panel compositions — he stacks his frames haphazardly and without regard for any rhythm and his staging sometimes runs over-dramatic, like when Alice Creed arrives at the airport — but he does well with staging the book, with leading us through the sets. His characters interact with the environments and don’t feel like they just sort of sit on the scenery. He takes off when the story calls for weird and bizarre imagery, providing some fun horror drawings.
Read the rest of my review at