3 out of 5
A good kickoff to two separate, ongoing Winchester brothers series, ‘Wayward’ could’ve even been that much better if not blocked by some off art choices.
Paulina Ganucheau – taking over on the Sam series after this – is clearly familiar with the jovial tone of the series (attested to further in a back-page Q&A with Paulina and Dean’s writer, Chuck Brown), as the brothers’ banter and basic monster-of-the-week setup feels true to the characters: not overly referential to the show, while giving new readers enough grounding to get the gist of how these two interact. ‘Wayward’ takes our duo on a dispel-the-ghoul-from-the-haunted-vase case, only there’s a wrinkle: Sam gets a call on his cell informing him – threatening him – to part ways with his brother, lest Dean die. What I really liked about this, and what showed some instant maturity from the often dunderheaded decisions made by the two in the TV version, is that Sam tells Dean about the call. …And then there are a couple of wrinkles in the story along the way that ensure we have a reason to split them up for their series.
It’s not mind blowing, but it’s not meant to be: Supernatural is not the deepest show, and Ganucheau writes within its borders while giving the book plenty of story to earn its cover price. However, this could have been a tad stronger if not for the odd decision to split the book up between artist John Amor and Kendall Goode. Both have a somewhat simplified style that’s comparable, and are further linked by colorist Pedro Estouco, but they also draw all of the characters completely differently. To the extent that Amor’s Sam looks like Goode’s Dean, and character who’s part of the case is draw without enough context clues to tell if it actually is the same character via each artist’s hand. Also – there’s no discernible story reason or beat when the change happens, which is normally something I’ll see editors do to kind of ease the mental burden of a visual switch.
As mentioned, this ain’t the most complex of books, so it’s not like it compeletely throws off the story, but the lack of character consistency is a big annoyance that could have sunk the rating if it wasn’t an otherwise fun book.
