Pick of the Brown Bag
October 6, 2020
by
Ray Tate
Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag by yours truly, Ray Tate. You probably thought I was going to say Jack the Ripper, but no, yours truly, Ray Tate. This week I look at the impressive debut of The Devil's Highway. This one is by writer Benjamin Percy and artist Brent Schoonover, under the aegis of AWA Studios. AWA stands for Artists, Writers and Artisans. Pretty cool, huh?
Devil's Highway opens in the fictional territory of Drift County, Wisconsin. A snow storm pelts a diner on the strip. In the diner we meet a local and Joe, the diner's owner. Percy casts it as a typical dwindling evening in a typical life in a typical midwest. Then, this happens.
The woman, an apparent victim of crime, changes the landscape. Soon the owner of the diner will be dead. Joe's death in turn draws a heroine back to her home town. Joe's daughter is Sharon Harrow.
Sharon breaks out a whole different kind of hell in Drift County.
I favorably encountered Benjamin Percy's work in Dynamite's James Bond and DC's Nightwing. In the latter I discovered Percy is a helluva Batgirl writer to boot. Nevertheless, I didn't know what to expect when putting Devil's Highway on my subscription list. Based on Percy's work I decided to gamble. I didn't expect Sharon.
The first moment when you see Sharon, you know this woman has agency. As you read on, you see Percy meshing his skillful characterizing with artist Brent Schoonover's striking design. And a shoutout to Nick Filardi's muted colors.
Sharon walks into the police office like she owns it, and in a way, she does.
This is not a happy reunion. Sharon recounts her shared past with the cops, when they weren't cops. The story now becomes realistically dark. The art thankfully doesn't.
I hate how the creators of some horror, mystery comic books equate their genre with literal darkness. I like to see things.
The experience Sharon recounts describes what it's like to be a woman in a man's world, and Sharon is a survivor of that world. She gets some more flung at her as the narrative unfolds.
I really love that line. "Maybe you could try smiling when you ask somebody to do something?" I mean, he's savvy enough not to conclude with Missy, but can you imagine a man saying that to another man. The sexism just drips until misogyny oozes from the non-supporting cast. Neither attitude impedes Sharon's investigation.
Percy and Schoonover present Sharon as a woman of mystery. They show she definitely has a past. One that's quite normal apparently. She however possesses skills.
This panel cropped to save from spoiling the delightful surprise.
Percy, at least in this issue, doesn't explain where her skillset comes from. She's clearly a trained observer or an absurdly good natural amateur. Is she police, mountie, FBI, CIA, or does she come from the opposite side of the fence? Nobody's talking in the premiere, but that underlying question intrigues as much as the way the visual pacing engrosses you into following Sharon wherever she takes you.
