Abbott by Saladin Ahmed, Sami Kivelä

​A tough talking, chain smoking investigate journalist in 1973 Detroit finds herself involved on an up close and personal level with a supernatural murder mystery of mythical proportions. Literally.
Saladin Ahmed charmed me with what he did with Black Bolt and now has won me over completely with Abbott. First rate storytelling not only mixing and matching genres, but also cleverly interweaving the subtle racial and classist commentary into the narrative.
Subtle is really the only way to talk about such things, otherwise it gets too much. Few authors seem to be making that distinction lately, jumping on the bandwagon of red hot themes without any specific approach other than shouting their truth. Which is fine, but to me way less effective than something like what Ahmed’s done in Abbott.
And of course if you don’t want to read it that way, you can always just go in for the adventure, the mystery, the suspense, the terrifying danger of it all. And for classic mythology fans there’s so much in here.
Excellently written, smartly plotted and stunningly rendered, Abbott is all you’d want in a book and in a protagonist, except possibly for her being weirdly hung up about her bisexuality. I absolutely loved this graphic novel and would definitely read more. Interestingly enough the alternate covers in the supplemental materials for this book were really not that great, not comparing with the originals. But that’s of course, neither here nor there. The book’s great. Recommended.