Sandra's Reviews > Blackwater

** spoiler alert ** Sadly that was a huge letdown. I expected some cool gay supernatural mystery werewolf stuff with horror and just got a we-need-to-include-everyone-and-everyone-has-it-hard-with-werewulfs-stuff, which was way to rushed at the end.

Like rly. I get it that you need to have to include some tropes in new ya comics and novels, so no one can point a finger but boiiii this was like let's get a handful from the inclusion bucket, but actually got all of them.

But OK, here:

1. Eli is the dork of the school, the outsider, the creep. He is always sick and often gone from school bcs he had an autoimmune sickness and is in hospital. His mother (no idea about his father but he had none) is annoyed by him bcs of that, even tho she works as a nurse (wtf). He is trans too (I guess, bcs it got mentioned once in like one picture, why he doesn't change in the school lockers anymore and the info didn't do anything for the story and after that it doesn't get mentioned again... Like why even show then - yeah I forget bcs if the inclusion - and I have a trans friend so, I get how hard it is for them, but in this story it didn't even matter). Oh and he can see ghosts ofc.

2. Tony, is a black dude (I guess he is black. The whole comic is in black and white and only the cover is in color, no idea where his origins are from). He is OF COURSE the sport dude, good at running bla bla. He loves Eli, which is pretty obvious rly at the start of the comic but he does shit about it when Eli got bullied by his friend (which I say something later on.) ofc he had a broken family too, a father who is a drunk and doesn't care much about his son and who is divorced (he later on is rly supportive and doesn't even had probs that his son is suddenly gay which just is such a sudden break in character, like did I miss something here?) oh and ofccccc he is ill to, he has asthma which no one in the sports team knows about and he wants to keep it secret... And he's turning into a werewolf later.

After we got the two main chars, we can't forget the body positively including person - the black overweight goth girl. She's cute but after that trope laden guys it's just like... OK yeah right we need that too.
And ofc the bad guy - the overly white American guns loving inbred best friends guy, who bullies Eli. Like right. Only those bully the nerds *rolls eyes*.

The whole mystery of the story is a werewolf girl (which I thought was a guy GASP YES I ASSUMED HER GENDER - bcs she just looked like some forest dwelling lumberjack boy with long hair), who lost her dad and didn't have herself under control. So she rampage around the forest and bit Tony on an illegal hunting trip. Origin or anything of her doesn't get cleared up (not that any background story get cleared up here).

Yes that's the reason for the "werewolf". They don't change while full moon but every time they are angry or pissy or moody and even can control to change back. So when their inner demons flare up they changed into the monsters. So after clearing up some misunderstanding between Eli and Tony, it's all oki doki and they helped the poor wolfgirl too, so she can see her ghost dad one last time.

And ugh the whole story is over the place I can't even put a summarize here bcs they chars are just so over the top including and all have it so bad. Mimimi.

I thought of giving 2 stars bcs the artwork is actually rly pretty, but in one scene Eli (WHO IS CONSTANTLY SICK) stole the inhaler of Tony bcs of some bullshit like 'u don't know how it is to always be sick' and that leads to Tony having an asthma attack on the sport fest with ambulance and everything. Just no. Rly. Just. No.