Supernatural: Origins

by Josh Crawley

With the recent solicitation of a new Supernatural mini-series, I thought now would be a great time to read Supernatural: Origins, the property’s first licensed comics, published DC’s WildStorm imprint.

In the past 13 months, I’ve become a big fan of Supernatural, the show on the CW about Sam & Dean Winchester, two brothers on a rather long road trip in search of evil supernatural things to hunt & kill, all while they’re listening to a pretty swell classic rock soundtrack. Because it took me so long to start watching the show, now in it’s fifth season, I’d passed on reading Supernatural: Origins when it first came out two years ago. I needn’t have worried.

Series co-producer Peter Johnson wrote this mini-series well on multiple levels. Within the first few pages the main character of the series, John Winchester (father of the Brothers Winchester), is introduced and his motivations made clear, even for someone who hasn’t watched the show. Additional familiar characters are treated just as well. Also, each issue of the mini-series feels like an episode of the show, telling a fulfilling, complete story yet still leaving more to be done. This has the nice effect of making the entire story feel like a mini-season.

Joining Johnson on the book is artist Matthew Dow Smith, whose work I’m pretty sure I’ve enjoyed every time I’ve seen it: the first time I saw it in DC’s Day of Judgment mini-series, written by Geoff Johns; on Jim Krueger’s awesome over-sized Clock Maker; and following Bart Sears on Crossgen’s The Path, written by Ron Marz. While I don’t think Smith draws the characters to look like the actors portraying them, that’s not an issue. He does an excellent job of portraying their characters with his art, which is much, much harder to do, and I don’t see it often enough in licensed comics.

I’ve also realized it is much more important, too.

Enhancing Smith’s pretty pictures with color is JD Mettler, probably best known for coloring Tony Harris lineart on Ex Machina, written by Brian K. Vaughan. Mettler doesn’t give the rendered, sculpted look many superhero comics have, thankfully, as Smith’s style doesn’t seem suited for heavy color rendering. The color holds (colorizing black lines), on the other hand are great for Smith’s style, and Mettler does them well.

The only thing I wasn’t impressed with was the lettering by Greg Thompson. As an area of the process that seems to fall through the cracks at the hands of too many people, though, I’m not sure Thompson is to blame. As someone who’s done a bit of paid lettering work, I would have shifted some balloon placements if possible and tried using a more condensed font, such as Comicraft’s Joe Mad.

Supernatural cover by Harris

In addition, the softcover includes a short back-up from the first issue by Johns, Phil Hester, Mettler, and Thomson (including some lettering choices on the motel sign I don’t agree with at all), and some test shots of John Winchester by Smith. It also includes the covers from the mini-series, including the Harris cover, which I think is the most iconic looking of them all. It’s the one I’d've used as the graphic novel cover, featuring a great shot of the Metallicar, and the John Winchester that looks the most (compared to the other covers) like Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the actor who portrays John Winchester. I’m guessing the Tim Sale cover was used due to the possibility of consumer familiarity with his work on the Heroes television show.

Also, the art of the car in the first two issues was “corrected” to the Metallicar, for the sake of continuity, when reproduced for the graphic novel. As I don’t have the single issues, nor did I write this far enough ahead to contact someone to verify, we have to take the word of the Supernatural Wiki.

That’s it for this week!

Feel free to contact me with creators you’d like to see spotlighted, comics for review, comments, concerns, corrections, questions, or even just your favorite beer. Be sure it says ATTN: JOSH if it’s sent post, otherwise we may have issues. If you just want more of me running my mouth, check Twitter.com/joshcrawley.

josh@westfieldcomics.com

Westfield Comics
ATTN: JOSH
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Madison WI 53717
______________________
Josh Crawley is the tenured Master of Disaster for Westfield Comics, not to be confused with Josh Crawley, the keyboardist for Everclear.

The Harris cover used in the article came from the Comic Book Database.

Purchase

Supernatural: Origins

Supernatural: Beginning’s End #1

Clockmaker back issues

The Path back issues (#13-18 drawn by Matthew Dow Smith)

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