Story Madeleine Holly-Rosing
Art/Cover Art Alessandro Miracolo
Colors/Cover Colors Marco Pagnotta
Letters/Design Brant Fowler
Sexy Variant Cover Federico Sabbatini & Chiara Miriade
Shrine Variant Cover Massimiliano Veltri & Marco Pagnotta
Alley Brawl Variant Cover Alessandro Micelli & Marco Pagnotta
Rough Day Variant Cover Francesco Tomaselli
Editor/Publisher Marcel Dupree
Editor In Chief Guido Martinez
For Evoluzione Publishing
At this point I can’t even remember how many Evoluzione books I’ve reviewed but I think it’s safe for me to say that Evoluzione is at the top of the indie comic game. Their producing quality comics at an incredibly quick rate and I feel like their doing it faster than other indie comic publishers. They don’t have monthly books as in one title a month but it seems like they have a book or a Kickstarter coming out almost every month. For an indie comic producer that’s a pretty fast pace, I’ve seen second issues come out years later while Evoluzione is knocking out a title a month or more in some cases.
One of the things I’ve come to expect from Evoluzione, especially titles like Kasai that stem from the SFC world, is the quality art. SFC itself set a standard but each individual comic from the SFC world has been as good or better than the original. Miracolo’s art is very similar in style to other titles like Angelica Reigns and the familiarity of the style makes the world of SFC feel familiar. Kasai’s character design is the same as when she is in SFC but I feel like Miracolo brings a different feel to the character through the facial expressions and body placement within the panels. A lot of the art is action centric and the colors help to make the pages pop. This is clearly evident even with a low resolution review copy. The colors are vibrant and cross a few different pallets depending on the scenario. I particularly enjoy the contrast of color when looking at Kasai and fire. I mean, she is the daughter of a fire god, so it only stands to reason she has a beautiful orange and yellow contrast.
One thing about a book that has the look of Kasai is that there can’t be any lazy lettering. I wouldn’t be able to take it serious if the letters were just plain and lacking style. Luckily Fowler had didn’t hold back on any front; captions, sound effects, word balloons, every aspect of the lettering is just as popping as the art and colors. Fowler adds a lot of colors on the outline of letters and uses it as balloon fillers so some of the dialog is exaggerated along with the overall mood of the comic. Master lettering at it’s finest.
I had to switch up my review style a bit and save the writing for last, not because it wasn’t top notch, just because as a writer I tend to lean towards the writing as a safe spot to be thorough. Clearly the wonderful art helped me shy away from my preferred formula but also because Holly-Rosing’s writing had caught me off guard. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Kasai as a character and Holly-Rosing added so much depth to her that I had to read this twice. Kasai is a champion fighter but also a fairly troubled champion and Holly-Rosing goes quite in depth to her feelings and relationship with her father. Keep in mind she is the daughter of a god so her relationship with her father is a pretty complex relationship. With this sort of a platform and character base Holly-Rosing delivers a little bit of everything I want to see from a protagonist; she’s a fierce warrior but also compassionate, she’s a troubled daughter of a god but also a person trying to do her best and down to earth. One part of complex character development is the general lack of action which Holly-Rosing doesn’t skimp on either, the fact that Kasai is a champion fighter isn’t lost in emotional aspect of the book, it’s balanced perfectly and adds to Kasai’s likability as a character. I may not have had an idea of what I was in for but I was left more than pleasantly surprised.
If you like Kasai as much as I do and want to check out more from Evoluzione you can check them out on their Facebook page and keep up with all things Evoluzione.
