Hidden Society #1 (Review)

HIDDEN SOCIETY #1

Writer: Rafael Scavone

Artist: Rafael Alburquerque

Colorist: Marcelo Costa

Letterer: Bernardo Brice

Score: 6/10

While the book definitely had promise, this issue unfortunately doesn't quite deliver on that potential. The premise is that underneath the veil of everyday life, there is a secret world of magic. The issue primarily functions as an introduction to our main cast with a quick introduction to the character and display of magic as Ulloo, an old wizard visits the cast one by one to recruit them to possibly fight evil magicians?

Given how many characters are introduced in this issue, very little time is left to show any trace of what the main plot is or who the main antagonist is and because of this the issue feels fairly aimless. This first issue should have been longer or focused mostly on one character and how the main premise relates to the character and maybe tease another main character to lead into the next issue.

The introductory scenes themselves are fairly short and have some odd awkward dialogue that doesn't serve too well to establish a tone for each of the characters or hook the reader to the series. There is a good variety in the characters with one being very young, one being a blind magician, and the last seemingly being a dark magician but unfortunately most readers would be hard pressed to add more to those descriptions.

The art by Albuquerque and Costa is fine and we see Albuquerque has updated style a bit since his days on American Vampire. His earlier style had a rough, sketch quality of it that's largely missing from the art in this series that doesn't really hold as well. His previous style felt uniquely his and this cleaner approach comes off a bit generic which unfortunately when paired to the fairly messy writing leads to a fairly disappointing issue.

Unless you're a huge fan of the Rafaels, I would not recommend this issue or at the very least, wait for a few more issues to see if there is more character development.