Pluto's Gate

"This is my discovery!"

Writer: James Hudnall

Format: Comic Strip

Released: February 2022

Printed in: Lucky Comics 01

Featuring: Olive Hawthorne

Synopsis 

Olive Hawthorne assembles a team of talented students skilled in the mystical arts and the arcane. Can the protectors of Devil's End stop Scorpio before he unleashes the destructive force of Bak? And what is lurking in a cave near the village that could destroy the world!

Verdict 

Pluto's Gate was a great comic strip adventure! This followed on very nicely from the Scorpio’s Sting story that served as the 2019 Free Comic Book Day special from Lucky Comics, and it was lovely to get a more feature length comic adventure to explore life beyond The Dæmons for Olive Hawthorne. She’s a strong character and that was clearly evident in this adventure. You would think after everything that happened to her that she would want to depart Devil’s End and live a quiet life somewhere else! But I really like that she feels a sense of duty to the village and the safety of its people. We already know that there’s a power source somewhere beneath the village and we got to explore that and the potential threat it had. I liked her apprentices of Grace and Jiro to really set out a team of main characters. They were definitely more prominent this time around which I liked but I couldn’t help but laugh that they had to take the car whilst Olive just transported herself to the cave site that was found. That hardly seemed fair! Olive was still the main character for sure. I thought Dr Vandal was a strong character and his interest in the dig and what he was discovering was great. He was selfish and looking to take all of the credit when he discovered the device that showed him that something lay at Devil’s End. I really liked exploring ancient mythology and artefacts so combining a Roman site with a temple that worshipped the God Pluto was excellent! That was a strong historical combination. I am always fascinated to think what life would have been like in the Roman era for an ordinary citizen and getting any glimpses at that is brilliant. I have to praise the artwork once again as I really enjoyed the retro feel! It’s black and white which initially I wasn’t terribly excited about, but after reading I thought it was fantastic and added a strong vibe and perhaps actually added to the mystery and enigmatic feel. The use of Latin was probably a little overboard and it got slightly tiresome to have another character have to ask what was said instead of just a translation, but it linked back to the Roman site nicely. I couldn’t be too bad at it! The length was good and didn’t overstay  its welcome whilst maintaining an entertaining pace that flowed very nicely. I was really interested in Pluto’s gate and whilst some elaboration on why that was dangerous would have been beneficial, I liked the history behind it. Volam was intent on taking the glory of the find and that would mean freeing the evil at hand, but the Golem dealt with him rather brutally before the cave collapsed and sealed it in forever. The lack of specifics meant the police and media wouldn’t know about it other than the tragedy, and Olive needing to guard the site for the future sets us up nicely for Hawthorne’s Brigade and hopefully more adventures from Lucky Comics! Overall, a great read! 

Rating: 8/10