First time I've come across Dancy, whilst shopping in my local comic book store and deciding to try something new.

This hardback is a collection of the 5 story arc where Dancy is left by her Avenging Angel to face the monsters and Wolves alone (apart from the talking blackbird and the ghost of the werewolf she kills in the first story).

This is not an easy journey for Dancy, feeling alone and angry that she seems to have to do the dirty work for the angel but gets deserted at her most challenging time.

Story is good, graphics and lettering are decent and reflecting the disintegrating world that Dancy finds herself in ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2013-08.html#alabaster ( )

Kiernan returns to writing comics, this series based on her first paranormal thriller heroine, Dancy Flammarion, the albino sixteen-year-old girl who roams the back roads of the South hunting demons, armed with a butcher knife, guided by a seraph that only she can see. She begins this adventure in an isolated werewolf town with her virtue intact, her conscience clean. She adheres to her pact with her angel. She does not believe that what she does is murder, although her opposition disagrees, and she has persuaded herself that it is OK to pilfer from the dead. She keeps her word - and follows the Word.

By the time this story ends, she has cheated and lied - and, arguably, killed - for personal gain. She has broken her pact with the demon and refused to repent her sin, tired of the angel's refusal or inability to help. And she has absorbed a different book than the Holy Book, an evil books, and she is beginning to enjoy the power and freedom it gives her.

I have read very little about what Kiernan has said and written about the rural South she grew up in, save that she has little use for their religion and some aspects of their culture. That doesn't stop her from using that culture and religion very convincingly, or to create great characters who wouldn't exist without either - a talking black bird who could have walked out of a folk tale, a redneck werewolf girl, a crummy wizard who runs a crummy gas station, an aristocratic villain with old school charm. And, of course, poor Dancy, a religious fundamentalist who has lost contact with the beliefs she built her life on and is now on a dark road of self-discovery. ( )

Oh, my, so pretty. And grim, but then, I'm no stranger to Kiernan's fiction, so that was no surprise. ( )

A petite, albino girl with haunting red eyes and cornsilk hair, Dancy Flammarion seems fragile and almost ethereal. Certainly the last person one would expect to be a demon slaying bad ass, but where Dancy goes hell is sure to follow.

I had never heard of Dancy Flammarion before I picked up this title by Dark Horse comics. Dancy is a modern day Joan of Arc, chosen by a fearsome seraph as a divine tool for annihilating whatever lurks in the shadows. And this angel didn't fall out of some Nativity scene--with four grimacing faces, batlike wings, and a flaming sword, this angel will not be rendered into a Hallmark figurine anytime soon. Dancy goes where and does what the angel tells her, but not without a little pushback as Dancy is certainly no shrinking violet. It's her tendency to rebel that causes her angel to abandon Dancy just when she needs it the most. Now Dancy's only allies are a talking blackbird, the ghost of a werewolf, and her trusty kitchen knife.

This is a clever storyline as one is never really certain if Dancy is a religious zealot, seeing and believing in what is necessary to unapologetically hack and slash her way through the American South, or is she honestly chosen as heaven's lone soldier? Dancy herself is cognizant of this conundrum, wondering if she's crazy or perhaps the sanest person on earth. The answers in the end aren't simple and, while I can't say much for fear of giving anything away, create a challenging and complex character that is more intriguing by the final issue than she was in the first.

My one complaint is that Dark Horse has chosen to continue Dancy's story, but only as part of the Dark Horse presents anthology, a title I'm not particularly interested in following. Until Dancy returns in her own title, I think I'll check out Kiernan's Dancy novels for more of my favorite kitchen knife-wielding demon slayer. ( )