Review by Frank Plowright

Almost a decade after Stefan Petrucha and Sho Murase’s Nancy Drew stories were marketed at young adults via the Papercutz imprint, Dynamite repackaged their first three original graphic novels as the Nancy Drew Omnibus.

Starting with the beginning of the series has an obvious appeal, but it shortchanges the creators, who took some time to work their way into the idea, and their best work was after these three stories.

A major drawback is Murase’s unimaginative art. She’s technically good, and can draw well, although adopts an unappealing style with angular looking people. That wouldn’t greatly impact  were it not for the additional problem in laying out interesting pages. Whenever possible Murase favours close-ups, and the manga style involves the minimum amount of backgrounds. Her best outing here is the third, when the use of 1930s clothing and technology supplies a distraction, and Petrucha’s plot means backgrounds are necessary.

Petrucha varies his plots, but The Demon of River Heights is an introductory stumble-through with suspicious characters who never transcend being there to service a mystery plot concerning missing film students. For both this and Writ in Stone Petrucha works towards good endings, the motivations of the second improving on the first.

It’s only with the faux period setting of The Haunted Dollhouse that the series begins to show potential. Petrucha writes scenes requiring Murase to move beyond page after page of close-ups with minimal background, and the set-up is intriguing. It concerns crimes in the community foretold by posed figures in a doll house sealed in a glass case, and involves the possibility of the supernatural, although overlaid with Nancy’s rationalist resistance.

Nancy Drew originated in the 1930s, but almost a century of novels have provided constant progress with the adventures always set in the present day and using available technology. It’s ironic, then, that the best of these three stories returns Nancy to the decade of her debut.

The Volume One subtitle indicates hope for a continuation that never happened, so anyone who is captivated should head to the fourth paperback The Girl Who Wasn’t There. These stories have previously been repackaged as the first two volumes of Nancy Drew Diaries.