TRAGIC

A young woman’s search for her father’s killer exposes dark family secrets and deception in this contemporary graphic-novel take on Hamlet.

New Yorker Harper Hayes is shattered by the sudden loss of her father. Hamilton died of a heart attack, at least according to the coroner. But then Harper runs into her father’s ghost at the old theater where the famous actor first took the stage. Hamilton, appearing as his younger self portraying Hamlet, assures his daughter that his death was a murder (“You know what you have to do”). Harper is determined to unmask the killer and has a couple of suspects in mind, from Hamilton’s estranged brother to his business partner at CPOLO Invest. She also finds a solid lead—the very real possibility that someone forged the coroner’s report. Another suspicious death takes Harper’s investigation in an entirely new direction, and she gets helping hands from her ex-girlfriend Talia Polonius and her friend Holden Parker. Answers may lie in the Hayeses’ remarkably creepy Gothic home or at the coroner’s office, which would require dealing with the security system. All the while, Harper is periodically blacking out. Along with an apparent vision of an unknown person shoving her off a balcony, she wakes up after one blackout with blood on her hands that won’t come off. As Harper and the others inch closer to a possible solution, their mutual trust wanes. Harper may not be willing to believe someone close to her is guilty, and her friends may even question her startling proximity to Hamilton at the time he died.

Despite the infusion of elements from Shakespeare’s play (for example, character names), Mele develops an original and sublime cast in this series opener. Ghostly and winsome Hamilton, for example, provides some comic relief, as he tends to utter his remarks while Harper converses with people who can neither see nor hear him. There’s also a potential love triangle. Harper and Talia may reignite old feelings, so long as the protagonist stays mum about the “benefits” that she and Holden at one time added to their friendship. Harper’s visions, often accompanied by Hamlet quotes, are gleefully unnerving, as a bizarre presence of some kind seemingly takes over the panels and the hero’s mind. But like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Harper and readers can’t be certain if any of it is real—is Hamilton a mere figment of her imagination, or has her father come back to help her solve his homicide? It’s all a puzzle, which effectively parallels the murder mystery, including the likelihood that the killer is someone Harper knows very well. Pinti and Di Francia, who have worked together on the Red Sonja: Red Sitha series (2022), fill the pages with bold colors and characters’ sharply expressive faces. The few instances of Harper’s sometimes bloody hallucinations are particularly strong and reinforce the narrative with an ominous supernatural vibe. The volume ends on a cliffhanger. In Mele’s closing notes, the author hints that subsequent installments won’t completely follow Hamlet, so the murderer’s identity may surprise readers familiar with the tragedy.

Exceptional characters elevate an absorbing, often eerie murder mystery.