Review by Frank Plowright
Black Mary is a chilling mystery of possibly supernatural activity in a small British coastal town. It piques the interest of Lord James, libertine, novelist and adventurer who travels to Mordwick to uncover secrets.
It’s taken almost thirty years for Rodolphe and Florence Magnin’s period drama to be translated from French into English, possibly due to historical fiction being a long established genre in Europe, yet barely touched by English language creators. Rodolphe was also responsible for Trent’s melancholy activities of turn of the 20th century, but James is an entirely contrasting personality, grasping life rather than considering it, and not afflicted by the superstitions of his 18th century era. His interest is greatly aroused on hearing stories of people returning from death.
While Rodolphe’s story moves along at pace, the art is somewhat the mixed bag. Magnin composes each panel as if a painting, sometimes down to using wooden panel borders to separate them. Incredible amounts of detail are supplied to evoke the period culture, but there’s not enough contrast, and the pages therefore come across as flat and cluttered. Almost cartoon people within painted art doesn’t work either.
The more James investigates, the greater the stories are embellished, and he’s soon hearing of arcane practices, yet it’s inevitably a finite resource. Everything changes, though, at the point James considers leaving. Under other circumstances James being a rich and entitled member of the nobility amid times of such poverty would render him unsympathetic, but curiosity, eccentricity and spirit of adventure combine to make him interesting. By the end he’s involved in more adventure than he ever could have imagined.
A question likely to arise is why the series title is Black Mary when Lord James is the central character. Mary doesn’t actually appear until the final pages, but takes over the narrative and introduces some answers to the mysteries as the story concludes in Passage to the Hereafter.
