Buffy and or say X-Files might be the best comparison for Spare Keys for Strange Doors. Or maybe Lost Girl if you know it. Toby Hathaway and Marion Sark are professional supernatural problem solvers.
‘Blessed’ with powers of their own, they are sought out or brought in when things get weird. Like golems and ghosts and underwater witches. Then they solve the mystery, catch the baddie and put things, well, not always right, but at least patched up good enough for everyday.
The stories vary in length, including a little 4 page strip with Toby and Marion at home. The others are more in the 20-30 page range and feel very much like an episode of a tv series.
With that sort of format, and the ability to tell all sorts of stories involving all manner of paranormal elements, it’s a comic with a lot of potential. And it’s all done by one person, Lucy Lyall. Oh yeah, and she does a second comic called Kaspall.
Did I mention she does it really well? Her art I might compare with Spike of Templar, Arizona fame. Sitting somewhere between realistic and cartoony, her greatest strength may be that her characters are not all idealized. They are human. Except, y’know, when they are creepy Hags and other nasty things. The colours are bright with just enough shading to give weight and shape to her drawings. Occasionally you get an odd-looking face or arm, but it’s offset by a brilliant foreshortened character running in the next panel.
Lucy also has a great handle on directing and staging. These sorts of stories have a heavy people talking quotient but she does a great job of moving the camera around and giving people things to be doing while talking. Even if it’s just wiggling their toes nervously.
New episodes, I mean pages go up Thursdays. If you are a Buffy or X-Files fan, it should be must see TV, I mean comics.
