Sirens of the City #1: Where Monsters Dwell

Sirens of the City #1 is a great book for the right kind of reader. It’s admittedly dark and unforgiving, relishing in its edginess in a way far removed from anything idyllic. The characters on display are exaggerated caricatures of their basest character traits, and as such, some can come off as sympathetic yet completely unlikable. However, expertly so, room is left for them to grow over time.

The themes, messages, and ideas are portrayed with the grace and delicacy of a shotgun, but its blunt delivery is much needed for how the book builds its atmosphere and world. Put simply, it’s not a book for those looking for escapism, nor is it a pretentious representation of bodily autonomy that dances around the idea in order to remain ‘literary’. It’s a strange work of expression, one that manages to be both an excellent visual and written narrative experience. Starer and Randolph have a major hit on their hands if the rest of this series follows suit.

Our story follows a young girl with strange powers, living pregnant and homeless on the streets of New York City. After meeting a flamboyant guy who welcomes her into his world of strange human-like beings with powers not unlike her own, this girl is named Layla and is branded by others as a ‘Siren’. Unbeknownst to herself, Layla finds herself hunted by supernatural groups and creatures from across the city, her powers something so special they need for themselves.

While the plot isn’t wholly fresh, the way the team executes it is. It’s constructed entirely around Layla’s journey, the team having crafted a near-perfect narrative pace that teaches you all you need to know about Layla as a character in the same time she learns about herself. There is a lot of excellent world and plot building that intersects directly with Layla’s own struggles as a human being who doesn’t often get treated as such.

The technical strength of the writing here is immaculate, but the plotline is a bit bland at the moment. It’s not entirely disconnected from Layla’s personal issues, which is the driving force behind the narrative depth in this issue, but it is a bit underbaked and under-communicated at the moment. What matters to this issue’s enjoyability is the character writing, and in that case, this book rocks.

Overall, the story is bolstered quite a bit by Randolph’s excellent artwork. It utilizes a black and white color palette with specific coloring highlights to communicate themes, emotions, and things of importance in a way that feels directly ingrained with the book’s overall storytelling process instead of being just a visual gimmick. The penciling and characters themselves are expressive and alive, the illusion of their movements smooth like butter.