AKI

After their stellar run on Wonder Woman, writer Greg Rucka and artist Nicola Scott return to the world of Detective Rowan Black with a revealing coming-of-age story. Some family legacies are easier to bear than others, and in issue #6, Rowan’s 13th birthday party is capped off by the day’s actual main event — her awakening ceremony. It’s been more than a year since issue #5, and it was a good decision to use this flashback issue to reacquaint readers with the characters by exploring a critical period in Rowan’s history. The happy-go-lucky preteen we meet at the start of the issue is a “typical” kid enjoying her life. This naive young Rowan is quite the contrasting figure to the 33-year-old with the prevailing sense of melancholy we’ve known so far. Although her mother and grandmother adore her and have raised her in the traditions of their religion, Rowan cannot fathom the impact of the line she will cross at her awakening ceremony. Rucka deftly structured the issue as a “before and

“The Undertaking of Lily Chen” by Danica Novgorodoff has a title with a double meaning: “undertaking” as in an important or difficult task or venture, and also “undertaking” as it relates to funerals and the procedures of burial. The plot is driven by the folk custom of “corpse brides,” which Novgorodoff explains via an epigraph quote from “The Economist” and then expands with a Chinese history as the story begins. The hero, Deshi, needs a female body to provide a bride for his dead brother. Driven by family duty and guilt, his thoughts turn to murder in the first moment he sees the titular Lily Chen. The prologue is a small tour de force of efficient and emotionally potent exposition. The opening hook is excellent, establishing the hero and the central conflict quickly and suspensefully. In this section, Novgorodoff uses facing pages in alternating prose and pictures to weave together past and present. The pacing for this section is perfect, and Novgorodoff’s prose is poetic, making