Our pal Kit reviews comics for us! This is one of those reviews.
Warning: minor spoilers.
“Still…. It’s better the devil you know.” – Sigma
I’m picking up another review this week while Adam focuses on his PhD. I thought I’d mix things up a bit with another indie comic review – I decided to check out Cognition, published after a successful Kickstarter campaign.
- Script and Lettering – Ken Reynolds
- Art – Sam Bentley
- Editor – David Haliwood
As with many indie comics a small creative team put Cognition together. The story follows Silas Pope – a spy working on behalf of B.O.S.S., the British Occult Secret Service, Hattie Griggs – an agent working under Silas, Calibre 507 (Cal) – a steam powered automaton inhabited by a displaced human soul and Sigma – a mouse inhabited by the spirit of a demon. The comic jumps right in with its first of three introductory stories. We get to see typical cases investigated by B.O.S.S., the supernatural horrors they’re up against and what happens when Sigma is let loose to do his thing.
One of the small issues I’d flag with this comic, as it jumps right in with the plot I did spend a bit of my first read through wondering who exactly was who and especially what was up with the mouse and automaton. There are useful character bios on the final few pages though, which helped fill in the blanks. Being critical it would have been useful to have a bit more exposition during the stories themselves to understand who’s who in this story.
The art has been done entirely in black and white, which helps set the Victorian era tone of the comic. Sam Bentley did a very good job, using shadow effects and contrasting black and white where need be to create the right atmosphere and add a sense of the supernatural to the occult threats. Ken Reynolds does a fantastic job with the lettering throughout the issue. I was very impressed with this. Different fonts are used to add to the intimidation of the demonic forces and the speech bubbles skilfully lead the readers eye across the pages.
The real question though, Sam Bentley’s art has impressed, but is his hand drawing skills up to scratch? Out of the three stories told throughout the issue hands are only really shown during the first, even then due to the nature of the character interactions they don’t appear in any sense of detail too often. They look good when they’re on panel, though even then contrasting art styles, where the characters are often shaded completely black limits the detail of the hands you can see. 7/10 for hand drawing skills!
Final Verdict
It’s a very solid first issue, a little more exposition to who the characters were would have been useful, though the concept to the story is very cool. The art is very impressive as well. That in itself is enough for me to check out the next issue. I definitely recommend picking this up if you want something a little different. You can check out Cognition here.
Score: 7.75 Soul Fragments out of 10
