R.R.H. Volume 1 Review by Eugene Alejandro

R.R.H. is a comic book series published by Devil’s Due/1First Comics, and is written and created by Orlando Harding, and illustrated by Andres Esparza.

The series is about one of the many descendants of The Little Red Riding Hood named Sydney Woodman who ends up getting kidnapped by a werewolf, saved by an Ogre, and finds out that it is her destiny to slay werewolves just like her ancestors have done.

What makes Orlando Harding’s R.R.H. different from most re-tellings of The Little Red Riding Hood, is that while it does re-tell the fairy tail as a typical monster slaying story, there are a lot of twists and turns that help make it fresh. With R.R.H. Volume 1 being the very first story arc in the series, it does a great job at setting up the world, characters, and tone thanks to the spectacular writing by Orlando Harding.

The artwork by Andres Esparza has a very good amount of detail when it comes to how the characters and backgrounds look, and that is also helped by Steve Cobb’s awesome coloring he provides over Andres Esparza’s lineart. The action scenes that are featured in the story of R.R.H. Volume 1 are illustrated very well, and help support the dark and violent tone that the rest of R.R.H. has to offer (this series is very gory at times by the way).

I will not spoil the ending of R.R.H. Volume 1, but will at least say that it does a solid job of setting up R.R.H. Volume 2 for sure.

So if you are interested in reading an independent and creator-owned comic book series that does a very good job at re-telling The Little Red Riding Hood story, then please read Orlando Harding and Andres Esparza’s R.R.H. from Devil’s Due/1First Comics by starting with Volume 1 of course.

I give R.R.H. Volume 1 Two Thumbs Up, and 4/5 Stars.

Squarriors Volume 1: Spring Review by Eugene Alejandro

The entire Squarriors series takes place in a setting in which all the humans on Earth have become extinct, and the animals (at least the ones we see in Rural Illinois) have gained enough intelligence to speak like humans, craft weapons, make clothing, and live in tribal societies. This story arc is set in the season of Spring in the year 1996, and the it’s about 4 clans called the Tin Kin, the Sursha, the Maw, and the Amoni (while the Tin Kin, Sursha, and Maw are primarily ruled by Squirrels, the Amoni are completely ruled by Domestic Cats). While the Sursha, and Tin Kin tribes get along with each other, the Maw, and the Amoni are not only at war with each other, but are at war with the Tin Kin, and Sursha tribes because of their differences on how they choose to live their lives (essentially, this story is all about the the Tin Kin, and Sursha fighting against the Maw, in which the Amoni decide to want to kill all 3 of them so that they may rule the forest without another tribe being in their way).

While this idea for a comic book may sound utterly ridiculous to some people at first, Squarriors succeeds in executing it because the creators “Team Ash” (Ash Maczko the writer and Ashley Marie Witter the artist) did a fantastic job at making Squarriors a fun series that has very good writing and awesome art, and Squarriors Volume 1: Spring is a brilliant introduction.

Ash Maczko’s storytelling is top-notch as he is able to create a very new and unique world with interesting characters that works well in a post-apocalyptic story about animals without it misfiring.

The artwork by Ashley Marie Witter is without a doubt some of the greatest comic book art of all time. All the characters and backgrounds have lots of good detail to them to the point where they look real (especially in one panel that has a bunch of Cats from the Amoni tribe leaping out to attack a bunch of Squirrels. The cats look like ordinary Cats you’d see in real life), and the way that the gore is illustrated is great enough to help show the story’s dark tone.

An important thing to note about Squarriors Volume 1: Spring is that it’s a 4 issue mini series, and each issue begins with short stories that are set in the years 1985-1986 (ten and eleven years before the current story), and focus on human characters. The reason why this exists in the beginning of each issue is because it’s meant to foreshadow what led mankind to become extinct. My opinion on these short stories is that while they don’t explain too much about how and why all the humans are dead in the current story of Squarriors, they work very well as foreshadowing to the answer.

After all that I have just said about Squarriors Volume 1: Spring, it is a very entertaining creator-owned comic with a good story and outstanding artwork that graces the independent comic book market that no fan of comics should miss.

I give Squarriors Volume 1: Spring Two Thumbs Up, and 4/5 Stars.