I want to gush about something, but I don't have the ability right now to do the post that does justice to this.
Svetlana Chmakova's Nightschool blows so many other fantasy-outside-your-window series away. Is it what superhero comix used to be to me? Or better than they ever were?
The cast is huge. Like seriously huge, a lot to keep track of. There are many concepts floating around in the series, & each has depths, which are unexplained but which the writer seems to know. I wonder if at some point the mystery & the inventiveness will run out & I'll be bored. But for now, it's still unfolding & interesting.
And what characters! Among others: The little Russian-American (OK, Russo-Canadian) seer who was used to play the stock market by a gang of werewolves & just wants to go home; the Hunters who protect her, & the mysterious teacher who trains them. The spell scientist who teaches young witches at the school (& is always breaking holes in the classrooms) has left various large "seals" around in the past--how old is this guy anyway?--& has a sentient library who smiles with glee when he leaves it (her?) new scrolls. The comical night principal who may have swiped the percolator from the teachers' lounge; the pointy-eared "demon" teacher training young weirns (witches) in use of their "astrals" (sort of sentient assistant extensions of oneself)--who throws a snotty new pupil (previously home-schooled) straight into the final...and that pupil, about whom a mystery is brewing.
I get the impression that Chmakova at least has some idea what it all means, that this isn't JJ Abrams-style mysteries-without-solutions-yet-thought-of. I hope that the characters that are lying near death will come back so we can see more of them. I care about these strange characters.
The cast has actual ethnic diversity too. Not only are there weirns (a sort of witch), "demons" (with pointy ears), Hunters (that feels like it should be capitalized here), vamps, a mermaid, blah blah blah; but each group incorporates characters of different color, language background, etc. In the black-&-white art, character colors seem to come mostly in white & toned, but they have different face shapes & hairstyles--so if you're keeping track you can tell them apart.
I guess Chmakova has spent time around young children, maybe teaching even; the "astral training" class has that wonderful sense of understanding pedagogy. In so many ways, this reflects what people are actually like, in their wild imperfection & messiness. Not something an antisocial self-isolating nerd could manage to put in his raging power fantasy--which is why it walks all over what we get from too many "fantasy comics."
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