Comic book reviews for SparrowHawk #4 and SparrowHawk #5 by Delilah S. Dawson, Matias Basla, Rebecca Nalty, and Jim Campbell
Average rating: 4/5 stars
SparrowHawk #4 by Delilah S. Dawson (writer and creator)
Art: Matias Basla (illustrator), Rebecca Nalty (colorist), and Jim Campbell (letterer)
I could’ve seen Warren’s death coming. Of course, he wouldvarious the innocent, and be someone who Art has an emotional connection to.
Where I don’t think this pays off is the full emotional journey of Art’s. She’s bending toward evil, but it seems to be because of the effects of fairyland. We haven’t seen anything where Art’s free will or Art’s good spirit takes hold. Of course, there is also the tease that perhaps if Art hadn’t forgotten about her sister, she could’ve fought the evil influence from faerie.
Nalty’s color washes are just brilliant in bringing this world to life. How they pick the different colors for the action and various parts of the world are beautiful and brilliant. The art remains an incredible strength of this book, and I continue to love this so much.
I’m still unsure how Dawson will wrap this up in one issue. There is a single swipe to bring Art back to the human world and make her human again. The rules of faerie seem to say that she’ll need to kill the Queen, but then that will only make her eviler. I do not see any ease or simple resolution here, but perhaps I’m putting too much into the story.
SparrowHawk #5 by Delilah S. Dawson (writer and creator)
Art: Matias Basla (illustrator), Rebecca Nalty (colorist), and Jim Campbell (letterer)
This circular ending couldn’t get better. Of course, Art pulls Caroline into the faerie world as she escapes it. For the cost of everything she believes Crispin gave her, Art destroys it by becoming hard herself. This issue better lays out how much of Art’s decisions were her free will, not just Crispin’s manipulations or the influences of faerie.
It does make one wonder who the Queen started as. Also, is this how Crispin believes he can control this world? Or is he just an agent of chaos?
Crispin, at least, believes that Art will survive and thrive in the human world. We don’t know that, primarily because of racism and her stepmother’s general blaming of Art for her husband’s infidelity. And who will be pulled into the faerie world to replace Caroline?
While there are many apparent loose ends, Dawson does wrap up the story in this short format, which is an art in itself. The pacing works through the entire five issues, and it works in the moral lessons of a fairy tale. Watching the younger and more innocent Caroline lose her humanity would be even harder than Art’s transformation.
My one criticism of this final issue is that the art seems rushed. It’s more sketchy, and there are less details when they’re in the human world. Of course, since the story spends less time there, Basla wouldn’t have developed the same repositories of imagery as the faerie land.