Writer: Scott Snyder / Penciller: Hayden Sherman / Colour Artist: Ronda Pattison / Letterer: Andworld Design / Editors: Mark Doyle, Maggie Howell, Jake Williams / Collects: Dark Spaces: Wildfire #1-#5 / IDW / TP
Review by Paul Dunne
19th May 2023 (Released: 3rd May 2023)
The Pitch: Legendary writer Scott Snyder presents Dark Spaces, a thrilling new anthology series exploring our deepest fears of the unknown. Six weeks into the slow burn of the historic Arroyo Fire, a crew of women from an inmate firefighting program are risking everything on the frontlines when their newest recruit-a white-collar convict with a deep network of shady dealers-discovers they're mere miles from her crooked former associates abandoned mansion. When she proposes a plan to abandon their duties and hunt for riches under cover of smoke and ash, the team must decide if they're ready to jeopardize their one sure path back to normalcy for a shot at a score that would truly change their lives... but is this a flicker of fortune, or a deadly trap?
Crime.
From the outset, crime has always felt like an exclusively male pursuit and it's fictions, a male genre. Well, Agatha Christie aside, but hers were murder mysteries, with a detective usually at their center, which if we're going to be exacting about it, pushes them into the police genre. At least for this pedant. But I guess it's all to do with perspective. From whose view we see the story. Me, I like both views. Cop and criminal. Detective stories appeal to our fastidiousness, a sense that our life and outlook should be more rigorous, organised, and observant. Crime stories, or at least what I think of as true crime stories, seen from the perspective of the criminal, appeal to our outlaw spirit, our rebellious nature. Our feeling that the world is rigged and unfair, so deep down you want the criminal to get away with the con, the robbery, and sometimes even the murder. And the ones we see doggedly pursuing justice or crafting a heist so carefully you could almost mistake them for savants... they're usually men. In an age when gender equity is rising to the top of the conversational volume, it's inevitable that we'll see equal opportunities in crime, too. A fine irony, since crime is often characterised by an initial lack of chances to better oneself. In Scott Snyder's first offering from his Dark Space imprint, homed at IDW, it's the oppression that inherently male systems, like the prison-for-profit system, that set the women at the heart of this story on their final path.
Male pursuits.
I'm not someone preaching about the oppression of women and how wrong it is. That is something that should be apparent to you. The book doesn't preach either. Just gives you the names and how long they're in for. of the five women and lets you decide if you think they're wrong, One assumption I found going right out the window was that if they were in prison in the first place, they must have done something pretty bad. Justice is never about balance. The five women of Wildfire have been unbalanced by circumstance. The justice they want will have to be achieved as an extra-curricular activity. Even now in prison, the injustices continue. They're paid $2 a day to fight wildfires for the California Forestry Commission. Here, in the midst of all that burns and all that has already burned, their lives and in one case, their health, they're presented with an opportunity. And as with the secret flavouring that makes up all good heists, it's a once-in-a-lifetime, get-rich-quick, long-money game. But of course, they're not the only ones after it, and the women are pitted against a group of men who also want the prize for themselves...
Lurid, burning colours that make you feel the heat on your face.
The crew, headed up by the appropriately named 'Ma', are in men's world, almost it would seem to more prejudiced, assumptive eyes, playing at being men. They do a man's time, (for The Man), doing a man's job on the side (fighting fires). Later, in the midst of the heist, they wear men's clothes. Not only posing out of their gender but out of their class, too. These are rich man's clothes. Cloaks of finery they'll never be adorned in outside of this situation. Crime doesn't pay? Maybe it does, though. It pays in experience. In freedom, in elevated experience.
Carlos Ezquerra and Cliff Chiang meet in Hayden Sherman’s art.
Scott Snyder is a writer I wouldn't normally associate with crime. His ComiXology Originals have stayed in the horror vein popular with so many writers and his Bat-books quickly widened their scope to a sort of weird, cult-like conspiracy, often tinged with that horror. But he seemed disinterested in crime. It struck me as odd then, that in the middle of launching his own imprint, Best Jackett Press, he also chose to launch Dark Spaces at IDW. I love crime books. Given the choice, it's probably my go-to genre outside of superhero comics, so I was excited to pick this up and see what Snyder, and artist Hayden Sherman would bring to the genre. I have to say, it was a genuinely unexpected surprise. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this was a better experience for me than his Bat-books. He writes complex people in tense situations that like the fires Ma's crew fight, could explode and move into more dangerous parameters at any second.
Inventive panels from Sherman.
Sherman meets the writing, beat for beat, fusing Carlos Ezquerra with Cliff Chiang, which means he might already be one of the better pencillers working right now. But he wants to keep blowing you away, so his panelling becomes dense mazes... prisons of images, weighing down on the characters, stopping them from moving forward in their lives. Their rage is palpable. Ronda Pattison ups the game even further with her colours, which are lurid, burning. You feel the heat on your face. There's a crackling heat in Andworld Design's letters, too. Words have rough edges like they're catching in the throats of the speakers. Choked by thirst and the emotions they keep down. The team takes us to a dark place by the end, but with a light alive in there somewhere. One more flame, still burning.
Buy the original 5 issue series in our webshop now. Dark Spaces: Wildfire TP is available at your local comic shop.
