Cbr17bingo FAMILY
The Cabinet is one of those graphic novels/books where you will love it or hate it. The humor is offbeat, the characters are not always likable, but the adventures are strong. If Dr. Who meets Voyagers, with a hint of Stranger Things (or so I assume as I have not watched it), a little Buffy the Vampire Slayer, meets the wackiest D&D game (or Vox Machina) you have read that is set in the 1990s diverse cast series.
Creators, Jordan Hart, David Ebeltof, and Chiara Raimondi do not take themselves too seriously, and this shows with the final result. That is not to say this is a laugh a minute or whack a doo craziness, but it is not serious-serious by any stretch of the imagination. We do have grief, death, monsters, murderers, sneaky secret agencies and a cute, jock, muscle, midwestern breed sidekick (who is actually a lot smarter than he might seem at first) but there is an airy undercurrent, even though our heroine made a deadly mistake as a nine-year-old and killed her parents and let a world dominating demon out on the world. Almost a decade later she is trying to fix it with a space/time jumping cabinet (that holds the fate of the world in its drawers) and her companion. The two characters try to find artifacts to give to the cabinet so they can put them in the right order and save the world. That is if the villains don’t kill them first.
The tone is lighter than The Many Deaths of Laila Starr by Ram V. and Filipe Andrade, but if you are looking for a darker read then Laila works (or if you read Laila and are looking for a lighter read Cabinet works). And another darker and older read is We Called Them Giants by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans. But just because The Cabinet has more humor, it still has its edges and claws and a bit of gore (sometimes shown, sometimes talked about). And though I know I read it, I cannot remember The Girl and the Glim Paperback by India Swift and Michael Doig, but I do remember enough that it might be another read to try while waiting for the 2025 sequel (which I cannot locate except for a Kindle version) or after reading Girl.