A girl wakes in the hand of a giant wrapped in black armor. They have nothing but each other — and a place to go. Step by Bloody Step #1 is written by Si Spurrier, drawn by Matías Bergara, colored by Matheus Lopes and designed by Emma Price for Image.
I have three memories of snow, of winters cold enough to have any. In the earliest, I couldn’t have been more than 5 years old, in miserable, embarrassingly unstoppable tears at just how unbearably cold it was despite how much I had been looking forward to it. Not even hot chocolate could cheer me up. The most recent is the extremely long one that happened during my first year in college, where I found out how quickly that enchanting first snowfall gives way to being tired of months on end of icy brown mush in your path, ridiculous layers you have to put on to get from one place to another, and finding out just how long a walk you can take before your face goes numb. The most enduring memory, however, is being read The Snow Queen by my mother, marveling at its illustrations and the strange, magical darkness the snow brought with it.
I loved that snow. It’s the snow you see in Beauty & the Beast as the Beast saves Belle from the wolf pack. It’s the snow that greets the Pevensie siblings as they take their first steps in Narnia. There’s a dark, comforting loneliness you see when you mix fantasy and snow together, and the opening page of Step by Bloody Step drew me right back to my childhood, and the pure sense of wonder that used to come so easily to me back then. It’s a sense of wonder that stayed with me through the issue, and I’m delighted this comic exists.
Coda was the comic that made me fall in love with Matías Bergara’s art. It’s messy, wild and imaginative. It snarls at the thought of graceful curves or straight lines, it’s grubby and spills out everywhere, a myriad of details all tripping over each other to grab your attention. The more monstrous creatures look like primordial sludge that’s boiled and bubbled over until they were large and vicious enough to give our hero chaotically gorgeous fight scenes. There’s a sense of silliness in the over-the-top exaggeration in some places, but in the midst of this, there’s a cold stoicism that sells the drama of the moment. Some moments will chill you. Others will leave you in awe. Some are worth a giggle, and others will absolutely take your breath away.
Matheus Lopes’ colors add solemnity to art that wants to crawl about everywhere and do just about everything. There is no sacrifice to the vibrancy a moment calls for, but in wilder panels, the colors help to ground the scene. When the art slows down to capture a moment of wonder, however, the two come together to create something truly unforgettable. There’s a spread early on, by a lake in a snow-covered forest, where Battle Bot fights off giant, wolflike creatures while the Girl reaches for a plant just out of her reach. The two of them reflected in the still waters below them, strands and sparks of light sprinkled across their darkened reflections. I lingered on this page for quite a while. I keep coming back to it. Heck, it’s now my desktop background. This is the most beautiful piece of art I’ve seen all year, and besides its sheer beauty, it speaks to what the comic so far seems to be about: the Girl, oblivious to the world’s dangers as she reaches out to touch it, and the Battle Bot who will give everything it is to be able to keep the Girl safe from that same world.
If there’s a drawback to Bergara’s messiness, it’s that it can sometimes be hard to tell what’s going on. Oh, you’ll get broad strokes, but there are moments where it feels like the comic’s giving us clues, focuses on panels that will be significant later, and I come away feeling only 60% sure I’ve understood what I’m meant to. The silence of this issue doesn’t make things any easier. Obviously, with the Spurrier and Bergara team, a fair amount of this first issue is meant to be bizarre and unfathomable, but it’s a little tricky to separate what was intentionally so from what isn’t. Tracking the issue’s most explosive action scene is similarly tricky, though it remains a visual treat all the same.
Let’s talk about the story a bit. We open in the aftermath of a powerfully significant event. There are few clues as to what that may have been, but in the shadow of a snow-covered tree gnarled around a broken tower, a girl wakes up in the hand of a giant, silent, armored creature whose purpose seems to be to protect her. After making sure she’s warm in its grasp, Battle Bot begins to walk.
Battle Bot isn’t soulless. A parent-child relationship grows between the two. There is tenderness in Battle Bot’s protectiveness, a creature large and strong enough to rip a house in two can still gently pluck a flower for the child to play with. We get to see the sternness of a parent enforcing boundaries, the enraged tears of a child who doesn’t understand these sudden and harsh rules restricting her freedom, even as uncontrolled magic erupts around them both. I love it.
Along the way we learn that the Girl is not normal. There’s a magic around her, or inherent in her. One that throws up barriers around her. One that lets a drop of her blood enrich a dying field with life. And underneath the helmet, there’s more to Battle Bot than meets the eye as well. There are powerful magics surrounding the two, though neither seem to be in complete control of it. Though the two walk in silence, there’s a journey that must be made — and beyond the dangers they run into, there are those that pursue them, as well.
It’s easy to slip into passive voice while talking about what little story can be teased from the comic’s silent panels. The entirety of the first issue is very much an artistic flex, prioritizing the story’s vibe over the story itself. It meanders quite a bit through this fantasy realm, with an impressive variety of poster-worthy art.
Step by Bloody Step #1 is an expression of magic. It breathes out wonder, mystery, loneliness, connection and weirdness. It resonates with all the romance of the fairy tales I grew up reading, and it tells its story with as much messiness as beauty. I was expecting mess and heart from this team, but being drawn so deep into enchantment was the best surprise I could have asked for.
