Día De Los Muertos #1

Uno
"Dead, But Dreaming"
written by Alex Link
art by Riley Rossmo
colors by Nick Johnson

"Reflections"
written by Christopher E. Long
art by Jean-Paul Csuka
colors by Riley Rossmo

"Te Vas Ángel Mîo"
written by Dirk Manning
art by Riley Rossmo
colors by Megan Wilson

In the first of three issues, artist Riley Rossmo has assembled a collection of shorts thematically tied to the Mexican Day of the Dead.  Each of the stories is a fine meditation on death, in particular the toll it can take on the living.  In "Dead, But Dreaming" a grown woman Katrina—a sly nod to La Calavera Catrina, the lady skeleton in fine clothes ubiquitous around the holiday—visits the Deadlands to find her mother who died giving birth to her.  It is a vision of death that is as vibrant and dangerous as it might be, and its heroine Katrina—beautiful, liberally tattooed, with long, wild hair and a fondness for her skeleton-helmed motorcycle—is fierce but vulnerable, still guilty for her mother's death and so eager to meet her.  This longing, never realized within the story, since Katrina never does meet her mother, is nevertheless content, feeling through her unexpected salvation in the Deadlands that her mother does love her and does not blame her daughter for her early death.

If "Dead, But Dreaming" tantalizes the reader but leaves the story unfulfilled yet hopeful, "Reflections" is refreshingly complete.  It is a ghost story, a mystery.  Hired to resolve a conflict with ghosts which lands a father Walt in the hospital, ghost-liaison Zan returns to the home they haunt.  It is swift paean to justice and as Zan calls it "laying bare the truth".  Using a mirror, a not so subtle instrument to reveal the truth, he recognizes the dead as ancestors protecting Walt's two young daughters.  Though his specific sins are never enumerated and Zan himself doesn't take any action against the abusive father, his ancestors—in a rush of supernatural verve reminiscent of Poltergeist—take care of Walt with the very mirror in which they are revealed.

In the final of the first three stories "Te Vas Ángel Mîo," a mariachi singer still mourning the death of his lover, spends the night with a strange but beautiful young woman.  Unlike Día De Los Muertos' other offerings, this one is written partially in Spanish with an English echo, a celebration of the beauty of the language as well as an appreciation of the culture.  It also mimics the nature of the lady, who herself seems an echo, an echo of both Juan's words and his former lover Aislara.  Whoever...or whatever...she is, "Te Vas Ángel Mîo" is a bittersweet lyric of lost love and hard comfort.