Crimson: Scarlet X Blood On The Moon

Script: Brian Augustyn
Pencils & Inks: Carlos Meglia
Colors: BAD@$$
Letters: Richard Starkings and Comicraft's Saida Temofonte

Summary/Review:
This Crimson one-shot focuses on Scarlet's life before she is destined to travel to New York and meet vampire Alex Elder. The art for this issue is not by regular Humberto Ramos but by a new comer Carlos Meglia. His style is cartoony and not as life like as Humberto's with a lot a bright colours and curious body-hair but it still carries the same personalities of the Crimson characters.

The story follows Scarlet, looking short haired and youthful, and her vertically challenged Mentor's arrival in Mexico City to continue Scarlet's training with an investigation into the theft of artifacts. They are greeted at the airport by their contact that has a familiar guide, Joe. Joe is still human and still crazy and immediately takes an interest in Scarlet. The group gets down to their Scooby-Doo mystery chase and come across the strange tourist Nate Messenger who later turns out to be more than a tourist.
Then comes the freak show. A local businessman/ex-wrestler is in leagues with a vampire witch and her army of bloodsucking beauties. The businessman, Manny Montezuna, who wears a bright green lace-up sack over his head, sends his employees (who also wear lace-up sacks) to take care of the investigators. A wood cracking blood-spilling brawl erupts but the heroes come out unscathed and discover that the witch will be performing a ritual to resurrect an ancient goddess.
The brightly coloured action bursts from the pages as Scarlet and crew fight to stop the witch and her vampires but a resurrected goddess needs something more to be stopped. Nate then reveals himself to be a super-powered metallic angel. I didn't really like this look for the angel as it was nothing like the regular Crimson angels, we've seen angels before in heavenly armor (issue #1), street clothes (issue #7) and native-American armor (issue #9) but this seemed like a super-hero comic character not a Crimson character.
The story ends with parting tears from Scarlet as she says good-bye to her friend Joe, who is now a vampire and out of guilt for what happened to him promises that they will never be enemies.

A good story but it didn't reveal very much about Scarlet's past, only her first assignment. I was expecting a little more.
My grade: C

Review by: Adam Pascoe