Coffin Hill, Vol. 1: Forest of the Night

Pouty, pale, and possessed by a curse, Eve Coffin is not a half-bad young lady on whom to hang a witchy new comic series. The Coffin family have been the mansion-dwelling patriarchs of their small New England town for centuries (no Yankee thriftiness for them). As a punk teenager, Eve rebels against her mother’s expectations, except in one way: she doesn’t mind carrying on the family tradition of witchcraft. A night of bad behavior (drinking, seducing her best friend’s guy) in the haunted woods near her home turns dark and bloody when Eve tries to summon a spirit and, regrettably, succeeds. Ten years later, she’s an ex-cop trying to put an end to the disappearances still perpetrated by the fiend she set loose. Kittredge (Nocturne City) has written a strong character in Eve, with her guilt-fueled anger and sarcasm, but her plotting is shaky and overly tangled. Miranda’s (Tribes) vividly gothic art (black feathers are a powerful recurring motif) is highly original and keeps this spooky, smalltown, bad-girl melodrama from being just another retread of The Craft. (May)