“They say that I must learn to kill before I can feel safe, but I, I’d rather kill myself than turn into their slave”
As you might know, I’ve been trying to review every trade paperback/graphic novel I bought this year, but that hasn’t happened for a couple of reasons. One, I tend to get woefully behind on these things, so I’m just now reaching the end of July for when these books were released; and two, some of the comics are just kind of mediocre, and I don’t really have anything to say about them. 
As I was reading Our Soot Stained Heart, I thought it might fall into the latter category. However, a couple of things made it worthwhile to write about, even if it isn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be: Stipan Morian is a really good artist, so the art is very nice to look at, and Joni Hägg and Morian (who are co-writers) do some unusual things with the story that I really don’t want to write about because it’s too spoiler-y. You’ll just have to trust me! This is colored by someone named Ropemann and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, with edits by Marla Eizik and Jon Moisan. It’s from Mad Cave, it costs $19.99, and it’s 124 pages long.
Morian has an interesting, cartoony style that you might not think would work well with the steampunk aesthetic of the story, but Morian can shift to a more precise, fine style when he wants to, and a lot of the book has a fairy-tale quality to it, which suits his regular style quite well, so the book looks amazing. He uses lots of blacks and rough hatching to create The Coalition, the city where the action begins, which is a squalid, ruinous place where even the rich seem to live in somewhat dingy places. When our main character, Peggy, is taken out of the city and sent north, she enters a snowy wilderness that Morian makes terrifying, contrasting it to the steampunk haven she eventually finds, where she finds her destiny. There’s a final battle back in the city, and Morian keeps the action flowing wonderfully, keeping us apprised of everything that’s going on, as there are a lot of moving parts. 
There’s a beautiful dichotomy between the Russian Revolution-style action in the streets of the city with the more superheroic battle going on beneath it, and Morian does well with both. As I noted, he can shift styles, and he does so here, showing Peggy’s childhood with a slightly more precise line, while the present is a bit scratchier, while also doing a few pages in almost a Looney Tunes cartoon style. He exaggerates facial expressions, which isn’t a bug, as the fairy-tale nature of the story demands some over-the-top emoting, and he does a very nice job with the myriad characters in the book, making them all unique. His brushwork is exquisite — the full-page splash of a Sienkiewicz-worthy bear is a highlight, but there’s so much beautiful inking in this book, which gives everything a lived-in, textured look. The colors are stupendous, too, as we get the dirtiness of the city contrasted with the fierceness of the wild. The battle beneath the city, with its fiery reds and oranges, works well against the wintry temperatures of the revolutionaries in the streets. It’s just an amazing-looking comic.
The story is … well, on the surface, it’s nothing too great, as I noted above. Peggy Stones works in the city feeding the coal engines in the city, which holds back the winter. She’s not great at her job, so she’s sent off with a bunch of malcontents on a train headed north, where they’re going to where the Governor lives. She’s actually trying to find the Baron, who’s in cahoots with the Governor, but when she does find him, it’s not what she expects. She makes in back to the city, where she and the other malcontents foment a revolution. That’s not a bad plot, but it’s also not a terribly original one, and putting it in a quasi-steampunk setting is fine, but also not terribly original. 
However, on the margins there are some interesting things that make this a bit better than your average “oppressed people fighting against the evil system.” First, Hägg is Finnish, which you can tell from the fun umlaut in his name and also because there’s some fun Finnish folklore in this book (one character is named Fiina, which is a super-Finnish name). It adds some nice nuances to the story, and it deepens Peggy’s story a bit. We don’t get a ton of Finnish folklore in popular culture (unless you’re watching Mystery Science Theater 3000), and because of that unfamiliarity with it, it adds some nice weirdness to the story. The second thing … well, I don’t want to tell you, because it’s a rather interesting spoiler, and I don’t want to give it away. Sorry! It does add another interesting twist to the story, and it does work quite well. I shan’t say anything more than that!
I still don’t love Our Soot Stained Heart, but it’s better than I thought it would be when I started it. It has some nifty things going on in the story, and Morian is clearly a huge talent. It’s Hägg’s first comic, and I’m not sure if he plans to do more, but it does feel like a new writer working through some things. Morian has also not done a lot of comics, but he’s very much a star in the making. So, that’s that. Check it out if you want!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
