Review by Karl Verhoven

Carla Speed McNeil put one hell of lot of groundwork into establishing a series where the location is almost as important as the cast. We’ve been introduced to Jaeger Ayers, the Finder of the title, and at his simplest a guy who uses his many talents to help folk. His current assignation is former lover Emma and her family, ensuring they’re kept away from her abusive husband Brigham Grosvenor who’s just about to be released from jail. However, Brigham used to be Jaeger’s commanding officer, so are there conflicted loyalties? This takes place in a massive domed city where almost anything can happen, and McNeil’s prodigious imagination ensures the possibilities are maximised.

Sin Eater Volume One ended with Jaeger tricking Brigham by supplying him with the wrong address while he spirited Emma and her family away elsewhere, but cleverly fitting the apartment with discarded items to make it seem as if still occupied by the family. It seems almost sitcom territory, but one of many great aspects of McNeil as a storyteller is an ability to leap from the trivial to the tragic. The first volume of Sin Eater introduced the cast, location and some situations in passing now explored in full as this volume delves deep under their skins and into their pasts, fears and abuse. Along the way it explains how the volume title also refers to Jaeger, and as the city of Anvard is so important, it’s included in the explanations.

In terms of gender blurring, McNeil was way ahead of the curve in the late 1990s, introducing the idea of individual clans within a society where all babies are raised as the single sex. A complex set of expectations govern lives not experiencing the same judgement as our reality, but judgement and restrictions nonetheless. It’s one of many ideas forming Finder that’s introduced as normal, but for some people, as explored, it’s deeply disturbing, yet an indication of the thought applied overall. McNeil is also excellent at single horrific panels with appropriately uncomfortable captions such as “one day I watched Mom try to scrub a spot of sunlight off the floor. Didn’t seem strange to me at the time”.

The sample art exemplifies how Finder is unconventional and surprising. The genial old guy in his armchair having a cup of tea with Jaeger in his study is a mob boss. The kid playing around in the background is separated from her parents, and Jaeger’s in the process of reuniting them. McNeil’s art has gradually become more complex and toned. Different types of shading have been filtered in, and McNeil seems to be taking on board the methods of both Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez in different places.

Take the moments of joy when they come, as Sin Eater Volume Two isn’t easy reading. It’s dense, dark and relentless. Everyone is tainted and everyone suffers, and it completes a masterful and complex graphic novel worthy of the name.

Things continue in the less harrowing King of the Cats, or both books are combined in the first Finder Library.