The first issue of Dark Horse's new Ravenloft comic is out. Is it any good?
Well.
It's fine, but it has some problems.
The premise is semi-interesting: Rudolph Van Richten is off on some sort of expedition--and is needlessly tight-lipped about what he's up to or why--and his goodbye note to Ezmerelda D'Avenir, the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, and Alanik & Arthur sounds so much like a suicide note that they all set off to find him.
This first issue focuses on Ezmerelda's search. (I know we're supposed to call her "Ez," but I don't understand the reason for the change.) Ezmerelda encounters some gremishka, which really illustrates how hard it is to have an introductory comic with one character with no sidekick to bounce off of; she ends up just giving a lore dump, out loud to an audience of no one in the fictive world, as she fights the monsters, which feels incredibly clumsy. She has no real reason to be explaining why she has a prosthetic leg when no one is around who could benefit from that information.
After she falls down a glacier, she meets up with a nameless stranger and then they're both promptly taken captive by Viktra Mordenheim's minions and brought to the mad doctor's schloss. Viktra is suitably creepy, discounting anyone and everything except her own devotion to science. Ezmerelda eventually turns the tables on Viktra so that she and the mysterious stranger (a reborn) can escape. They run into a monster again, which causes Ezmerelda to immediately name what it is out loud (sigh). The issue ends with Ezmerelda smashing up Viktra's experiments and doing some arson on the way out.
Overall, it's an okay issue, but I'm not sure okay is good enough for a first issue of a series. Grab our attention, go big with it, damn it!
The Weathermay-Foxgrove girls look to be the protagonists of the second issue. We'll see if it picks up.