"Monstress Vol 1: Awakening" is an overstuffed witchcraft fantasy that's easy on the eyes but not so much on the ears

The teenage girl is mysterious and intriguing.  It's apparent that she has struggled in life, as her left arm, which is half as long as it should be, clearly indicates.  Her name is Maika Halfwolf (an imaginative name, eh?), and she possesses powers she's not even aware of.  Inside of her lives a demon, or a monster, or some sort of evil entity that can devour anything in its path: this is Monstrum, and it takes physical appearance by growing (and then later on receding) out of Maika's half-amputated left arm.  As she faces foes both physical and mental, she will try to control this evil within her, a task that'll prove more difficult than avoiding the assassins and the Cumean Mother Superior, a powerful woman who wants her dead (and whose lines sound as if they're spoken by a villain from The Bible).

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening is a product of Marjorie Liu's writing and Sana Takeda's impressive artwork.  As far as tone is concerned, Monstress' genre is fantasy (also a little sci-fi?  You be the judge), reminiscent of other Image series, most notably Saga.  But whereas the latter gives us memorable characters driven by realistic goals, as well as dialogue that is sharp and witty, the former is a bit archaic when it comes to the spoken word.  Instead of the modern talk, Liu supplies us with plenty of old-fashioned dialogue that reads as if it was written during the Victorian Era.  Not even the addition of two cool-looking companions of Maika's - a half-fox, half-human girl named Kippa, who possesses a very fluffy tail  that she often holds, and Master Ren, a red talking cat - can liven up the story, since the absence of humor here just turns the entire experience into exercise for the mind.  Takeda's drawing style is reminiscent of the look of Game of Thrones crossed with Saga - and from a graphic standpoint, it succeeds in capturing the mood of the overall tale more so than the writing does.

Monstress presents us with a leading character who is less fascinating than she appears, and its world is overstuffed with various insignificant and irrelevant characters and terminologies that, even though they should come across as cool and memorable, simply aren't.  Even Rat Queens, another Image series that I am not a big fan of, has far more spunk and attitude than Liu's fantasy series.  Maika's inner Monstrum may have had its awakening, but my interest in pursuing this serial further sadly has not.
C