Monstress, Issue #6 starts with Maika Halfwolf, the Arcanic beast-child, imprisoned in a thousand-year-old sarcophagus. Will it hold her? Sleeping inside the sarcophagus, the monstrum inside her speaks. The story of how she got here is summed up in the paragraph on the inside cover. Maika was betrayed by Master Ren, who now finds himself just as hunted as Maika once was. Master Ren is a talking cat with two tails. He and Kippa know too much to be let go.
When a writer introduces a gun, it must be shot, and when a writer puts its main character in a cage, that main character either breaks out or dies. I was tempted to see what happens at the end of this issue before reading it all, but somehow, I managed not to do so. Basically, the story is split into the Cumaea battling a small group of Arcanics, and a journey into Maika's subconscious, where monstrum talks to mother and to Maika.
Monstress has very high quality artwork. I'm no art student, but the detail is unlike anything I've ever seen. What you see on the cover is what you get in the issue, and Sana Takeda deserves to be mentioned alongside such names as Moebius and Dongzi Liu. In particular, I love the way eyes are used. When Maika is asleep, the monstrum opens her eye, and her blue eye looks pale, as if she were blind. And of course there is the eye symbol throughout the title but most prominently on Maika's chest. This is a wonderful title.
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