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Coffin Hill Vol. 1: Forest Of The Night (2014)

by Caitlin Kittredge(Favorite Author)

3.32 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

140124887X (ISBN13: 9781401248871)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Vertigo

series

Coffin Hill

review 1: Recently minted detective Eve Coffin seems like she has it made; she's singlehandedly caught a notorious serial killer. But after a near fatal shooting, she resigns from the force, and returns to her home, Coffin Hill. Her family's been in the area a long time, and drawn from the power of the woods for a long time, and now, something in the woods is coming to collect. First: it's nice to see a reasonably high profile, original comic with a female creator. And Miranda's art works well to the unreal nature of Coffin Hill. As for the book itself--well, it's probably the most "Vertigo" Vertigo book I've read in a long time. That is, it's the sort of style Vertigo was originally born in: gothic, moody, with a heavy focus on witchcraft and evil; Thessaly from Sandman would not f... moreeel out of place at Coffin Hill. The book feels like a bit of a throwback on that level, though the fact that it's the older character returning to the site of her teenage transgressions helps with that. The first arc is a bit of a set-up story; you don't get much on Coffin's life as a detective, but you do get a lot of Coffin Hill's story, albeit most of it kept deliberately vague. The ratio of revelation to further questions didn't quite work for me, and while the initial flashback to a teenage Eve worked great, there was a sense of diminishing returns on later ones. I think the big problem here is that there are two characters that really jumped out at me: Eve herself, and her grandmother's story at the end set decades ago. I cared about what happens to Eve, but the rest of the town wasn't really interesting. Still, there was enough here to make me think favorably of reading more issues. A good Halloween time read.
review 2: This book didn't work for me at all. A spoiled rich girl with witchcraft does bad things and then eventually takes some small semblance of responsibility in trying to make things right. But around that is random events (the entire first issue feels kind of superfluous), unlikeable characters (I have issues with anti-heroes in general, but if they're at least somewhat sympathetic I can usually deal with them. But Eve [and every other character] is just unpleasant to spend time with). Split between modern events and actions from a decade before, there just seem to be too many characters doing not a whole lot, and the antagonist seems ill-defined and never particularly threatening. The dialog and the character interactions went from obnoxious to nonsensical, and nothing came across as in any way appealing. Even the add-in story, telling of events from 1958, did much, although it explained a small bit more of the entity's abilities and intentions than the main story did. I can see how it could be appealing to some readers, but for me it was an unpleasant exercise that will not be repeated. less

Download links for: Coffin Hill Vol. 1: Forest of the Night

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