Beginning's End Graphic Novel non-review
Beginning's End graphic novel
Writers: Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin
Artist: Diego Olmos
Colorist: Marta Martinez
Letterer: Wes Abbott
Chapter One: Takes place in 2001. The Winchester's are in New York to track down a guy John thought he killed in '93. John Dee and into black magic. John hopes he will give him a lead on Mary's killer.
Sam is angry that they had to leave two days before his graduation.
They go to Dee's place and are attacked by some mysterious dude with a black fedora. He escapes but leaves purple blood.
At the hotel, Sam reads his Stanford acceptance letter. Dean asks when he's going to show it to their dad. A hunter John knows shows up with two other hunters. Cox, Delroy and Mirabelle. I like her hair. Short, dark, with long sloopy bangs. Not that that's important. I just like it. Cox runs NYC like a military unit with several dozen hunters under him. They bless the rivers every morning, set EMF meters across the city, and paint devil's traps in the subway tunnels. Kinda cool actually.
Cox knows it was a Naga that attacked the Winchesters so they are all going to hunt it together and see if it knows where Dee took off to. They catch the Naga, but Cox kills it before they can interrogate. A little suspicious if you ask me. Sam doesn't think they should be there and starts arguing with John. I Can't Believe He Just Said That!!! John slaps him. Normally, I would call foul, but after what Sam said . . . I don't even want to repeat what he said about his mother. It is horrible. (If anyone wants to know, just say so in a comment and I'll PM you with it, but otherwise I'm not saying, cuz even I don't want to think of sweet Sammy shouting something like that.) Kripes. And his features are drawn with such anger. It's hard to look at. Moving on from this page as fast as I can. Apparently Sam is out of there too because he walks off.
Chapter Two: Sam tries to get a bus ticket to Palo Alto, but doesn't have any money. While he's out on the street, he helps a girl who was running from some guy Sam trips. Turns out she mugged the dude. The girl, Kate, takes Sam to an unused subway tunnel where a bunch of homeless people have made a kinda little city. Turns out they know about hunters and the supernatural. They are all getting sick and went to Cox for help, but Cox wouldn't help them since it wasn't a priority. Sam recognizes markings on one of the victims as a hex spell and tells the people he'll go hunt whatever is doing this so the disease will stop.
Meanwhile, Dean is freaking out that Sam hasn't shown up back at the hotel. John isn't as worried because he believes Sam is smart enough to handle himself. It's actually refreshing to see John think of Sam that way.
Meanwhile Sam is hunting in the tunnels and finds the hex monster. Can't quite tell exactly what she is, but Sam blows her away. Except Kate comes running with all the underground city people chasing her like zombies. Sam and Kate start shooting, but there are too many. They're about to be overrun, but here comes John with some canisters and he nukes all the people, then kills Kate because she is infected. Sam freaks, and shoots John.
Wha . . .?
Oh, I get it now. None of that happened. The hex monster made Sam see all of that, but Sam saw through it and shot her while she looked like John. I was confused and had to go back and forth between the pictures until I got it. Denseness.
Kate and the people are all healed. Kate asks Sam to stay, but after that monster vision he wants to go back and see for himself that his dad is okay. That's the sweetie pie I know.
The hotel room is empty and Sam is drawn really dejected looking until John comes in and without preamble offers him a burger he just got. He asks if Sam is okay and Sam just says, "no".
Chapter Three: Um? I have no idea what just happened. Dean is running through a museum and finds Sam with his head cut off. However, Sam, er, Sam's head starts talking to him. And Dean's just saying things like, "how are you not dead?"
Pictures are different in this chapter so obviously a different artist, possibly a different writer as well, hence the weird headless beginning. Laughing. This is so stupid. Apparently the boys have taken a side hunt while in NYC and there is an ancient Egyptian axe beheading people. So Sam's head didn't want to be left on the floor so now Dean is carrying it around the museum to hunt for the axe. Oops, Dean almost drops Sam's big head and catches him by the hair. This is the dumbest case ever. Suffice to say, they get the axe and get Sam's head reattached.
Moving on thankfully.
Back at the hotel, John promises Sam when they find Mary's killer, they'll settle down in Lawrence.
Chapter Four: Sam and John have a shootout over a hot dog. Don't even ask. I don't know.
Meanwhile, Dean is hunting a vampire. Mirabelle shows up hunting it as well and they kill it together and do some snarky flirting.
Meanwhile, Sam is out walking the city on his own, mad over the hot dog incident. I'm still blinking at that one, it was so unrealistic. Cox finds him and apologies over the Naga incident and tells Sam he has the purple blood creature staked out. Sam asks why Cox is telling him and not John and Cox says it's because Sam thinks first, before acting. Cox gives Sam the address. Sounds like a trap to me.
Meanwhile, Mira takes Dean home for some nookie, but he is drunk and passes out on her. She gets a text and leaves him sleeping.
Meanwhile, Sam tells John about the purple blood thing. John is hesitant about Cox, but they go to the pier and find Cox tied up and beaten.
Chapter Five: It's a trap. Well, dud. Cox's hunters show up from his 911 text, believing John beat up their leader. Cox shoots John in the hip then kicks him. A lot. Mira checks John's pulse and announces that John is dead. Sam screams and they drag him to the van while Cox orders the men to go get Dean from Mira's place where she had lured him. Mira is ordered to stay and burn John's corpse.
Meanwhile, Dean wakes up and listens to the message Sam left him about a lead on Dee and to meet them at the pier. He totally misses the hunters coming after him.
Meanwhile, Cox's man in the van with him asks why they stopped wherever it is they stopped instead of taking Sam to HQ. Cox blows the guy's head off. Sam used his hidden knife to cut his ropes and flies out of the van and comes face to face with the fedora guy, cutting him and sees purple blood. The guy grabs Sam and Cox half-heartedly apologizes for selling him out.
Meanwhile at the pier, Mira is doing CPR on John. Guess she lied about him being dead. John comes to and starts choking her, but she tells him she knew Cox was lying about John beating him up because John's knuckles weren't bloody. Dean shows up and shoves his gun into Mira's face. She's not feeling a lot of Winchester trust here.
Mira takes the Winchesters to HQ and John beats the whereabouts of Sam out of Cox. Cox says he traded Sam for his own child.
Meanwhile, Sam wakes up strapped to a chair. Fedora dude and another guy are there. Sam guesses the new professor looking type guy is the powerful witch John Dee.
Chapter Six: John Dee opens up a gate to Hell in the large fireplace. John arrives and shoots him in the head. Oh well, so much for your master plan. One shotgun blew that.
John goes to check on Sam, but Sam has yellow eyes now and breaks free of his bonds. Dean comes in and Sam, er Azazel, flings him up against the wall. Then Azazel clasps John's head and shows him visions of Cold Oak and then Dean being ripped apart by the Hellhounds and then into Sam's nursery to show John that it was him that killed Mary. Azazel does this pretty much just to torture John.
John cuts himself and does some blood ritual that yanks the demon from Sam and makes Azazel pour into him. Dean gets released from the wall and John screams for Dean to kill him, but of course, Dean won't do it and then Azazel escapes.
Later, Sam is passed out on a couch (so cute) and John and Dean have an interesting conversation. John confides that he needs Sam to be hard since they are up against a demon who has plans for them. He thinks letting Sam believe John hates him will do that. John says he loves Sam more than anything in the world, but can't let Sam know that.
Sam wakes up, asking what happened, hoping it's over, but John says nothing is over and Sam gets miffed, realizing it will never end. John yells that Sam should just grow a pair and go to Stanford already. The big argument ensues-yeah, that argument, complete with "you walk out that door, don't bother coming back" and Sam walks.
Dean runs after to try and talk him out of it, but yeah . . . doesn't work. Dean goes back inside and John is gone, but he left the keys to the Impala.
Would I recommend Beginning's End? Why not? Shrugs. Except for Chapter Three. That headless Sam hunt was just whacked and didn't add anything to the story.
The rest of it was interesting, except for a few parts that really bugged me, like John shooting across Sam's shoulder over a hot dog. And although they were trying to show Sam's anger over the hunting lifestyle, at times it was way over the top. He seemed to explode out of the blue even when John wasn't being terribly unreasonable. And the way he was drawn during those moments made him look, well, ugly and cruel. Not even in a sexy BA way. It was just . . . not the way I want to envision any of the Winchesters.
As far as the final argument scene . . . That's such an iconic Supernatural moment, which has actually never been played out on screen, although it's been written a gazillion times in fanfic, seeing it drawn out in the graphic novel was a little surreal for me. Mainly because Kripe has said these graphic novels are canon, but also because John's take on the argument, purposefully goading Sam into leaving for Stanford, puts an entirely different spin on it than I had envisioned all this time.
Part of me really likes that because it is a new take on it, but the other part wants to shy away and settle back into the comfortable canon of it being a huge argument without ulterior motives. But that's Supernatural for you in any medium-taking away all comfort levels and flipping everything into a different way of thinking.
Kudos for keeping the argument at the same abandoned house Dean said Sam ditched them from in the Heaven episode as well.
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