Kingsway West # 2 Review

Kingsway West #2
Writer: Greg Pak
Artists: Mirko Colak
Colourist:  Wil Quintana
Inker: Matt Smith
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Editor: Spencer Cushing
Publisher: Dark Horse

Kingsway West #2 delves more into the psychology of what ties our characters together than in the previous issue.

We get a flashback that shows a burgeoning relationship between Kingsway West and his Wife Sonia. The reader gets to read what drives Hodge, the Agent of The United States of New York. Also, we learn why Ah Toy treats Kingsway with such reverence when she met him last issue.

One of the weakest elements of the first issue was the fact that there was no buildup to the relationship between Kingsway and his wife Sonia. It’s presented as two strangers meeting and then boom, we are dropped five years in the future and they are married. This issue starts off with a four page symbolic moment in their relationship. Sonia is domesticating Kingsway; teaching this legendary gunslinger to farm and he is not taking to it too well. While discussing his frustration, Sonia and Kingsway discuss what they’ve done in their previous life. This serves the purpose of showing that they are connected in an attempt to heal the damage they’ve done to both other people and themselves. It’s a short hand way of narratively showing why he needs her and goes on the warpath to find her after she’s kidnapped. In the first issue we are given the slightest clue at what drew them together but this gives us more to context to understand their relationship.

A character we are introduced to in this issue we only got a glimpse of in the last issue is “Strode”. She is the black woman with the wings. The Engineer, who leads the expedition from New York to find red gold, explains to Strode how he crafted her wings through, ‘rewire[ing] some parts of [her] brain. [She’ll] never feel whole without them.’ Without the red gold he seeks her wings will dissolve and the part of her she needs to feel complete will be gone forever. This compels her to go off in search of Kingsway and Toy. While the engineer tells an underling how violent she was, ‘killing 200 confederates with her own hands the day we burned down Atlanta’, when she does cross paths with Kingsway and Toy she tries to talk to them first. The only logical assumption to draw from this would be that everything the engineer says might not be true. Only further issues will tell.

Ah Toy treats Kingsway as a hero/legend through her interactions with her. She doesn’t believe he will kill her, even though through the first two issues he has racked up a body count needing at least 2 hands. She believes that, ‘every time some needs help’, Kingsway will be there to save the. It is almost as if Ah Toy grew up listening to stories about Kingsway and built him up to be this superman that solve all her problems. However, the Kingsway we are presented with just wants to, ‘get my wife, then me and her are gone’. Toy has this mythic imagery of Kingsway in her head but not the actual person with foibles and motivations of his own.

The character work that Pak does is really well done. However, one of the weaker elements of the book as a whole is Mirko Colak. He is a great artist, but not a great storyteller. There is one great moment of storytelling and it’s done in the beginning of the book involving Kingsway West’s wife’s locket and the way it moves through the panels in the first 4 pages. Other than that, there isn’t a great deal of storytelling done. The art in the book doesn’t drive a reader’s eye from page to page, or panel to panel. His splash pages are amazing, but it’s just the storytelling didn’t give the reader any impetus to devour the book.

Verdict:
Wait and See. I think Greg Pak’s story and narrative are strong, but the artist didn’t keep me enraptured in the series. Because this is a miniseries, I want just one more issue before I can give my judgment on whether this series is worth buying in trade or in issues. With the issues being so closely hewn together and the introduction of two characters in this issue, my gut is telling me it is a trade buy but I want to see what Greg Pak’s creator owned work looks like.