Shining Comics: Hexed The Harlot & The Thief
Hexed The Harlot & The Thief is a short series published by boom that chronicles Lucifer's second major journey. Readers need not have read the first volume in order to read this my girlfriend didn’t and totally followed the series and I read it in the middle of reading the second volume. Lucifer steals from a museum issue one and from there everything spirals. I’ll be reviewing this full series and Volume one is on amazon for preorder although I am not too sure how many issues of the run this book will cover. Given the price likely 5 (Super professional journalism here yall).
This is one of the amazing adventures that I do feel like spoilers actually matter. I mean you get plot twist after plot twist after plot twist and it all leads to the very end. What I can say is we see amazing magical action in this book, tons of “Oh gee how will Lucifer get out of this one”, and get a lot of drama too. The basic premise is that Lucifer is a thief who steals magical things for Val the owner of an art gallery. She collects them to keep people safe and sometimes people want these powerful objects that she collects. So when Lucifer takes something that is very important to several characters she finds herself and everyone who is around her in massive danger.
What I can talk about is the characters because this book is AMAZING when it comes to characters. Lucifer is pretty high up there when it comes to my favorite comic book characters now she is this badass person with confidence but understands she isn’t all powerful We get to see her at her lowest here and we get to see her happy here. Lucifer gets great character development in this book and it ties up her arc very nicely. The intern in this book is cool she starts out pretty annoying but I feel like as Lucifer starts caring for her the story does a good job at getting you to care too. Val is fantastic and feels like the heart of the book the whole time. Bob (I think that’s his name) is actually a pretty cool character as well. This cast also has some fantastically scary villains with The Harlot being this wild card that stands in the way the whole time. Madame Cymbaline is another force that the whole comic is shifting in positions and keeps the readers on their toes.
Can’t talk about comics without talking about the art the colors and general art in this book are for the most part amazing. I do have to complain a bit about Dan Mora’s body shapes not really feeling diverse for the human woman they all are pretty similar and I even got a late game character confused with Lucifer in a few panels when reading because how similar they look. It’s one of the situations where it’s more about what cloths is the character wearing and their hair then how their body separates from others. All that said we have amazing scenes that are feats of arts like Lucifer running through art in a fight. Also we get some nice creepy images and nice backgrounds. If body shapes were a bit more well rounded I think this could have been a 10/10 art wise. The colors bring everything to life and the art really does make me feel like i’m in the universe.
This book isn’t for everyone it has come more extreme violence but if sex is the thing that scares you away there isn’t really any of that here. The story is all about woman and doesn’t ever sexualize them at least in any moments I can remember. I think if you can handle some blood you should really give Hexed a go. It balances drama and moments of life very well. Check this series out it might be harder to do physically especially the second half but I really recommend this title. Dan Mora’s art is great, Michael Alan Nelson’s writing as at his very best, Ed Dukeshire’s lettering is actually really great, and Gabrie Icassata knocked it out of the park with the colors. It’s a fantastic indie book that I feel got overlooked during it’s run.
For other entries in shining comics click here because there are tons of fantastic comics that are overlooked that I want to highlight. I try to do this weekly and the next one should be Princeless Vol 2 and 3 unless some other book really inspires me.