3 out of 5

This is from mostly the same team as The Valentine mini – just the two Molinaris (the preceding The Pit had three) on writing, and Jamie Martínez Rodríguez on art – but it’s a much more solid tale than that outing, with Roberto / Andrea still maintaining the pacing and show vs. tell improvements shown in The Pit, and Rodríguez’s figures and facial work seeming much more natural, and less apparent photo reference. Tether is also, surprise, the first Shepherd book in a bit to actually focus on the characters mentioned in the inside-cover summary: Professor Miller and his son, Val, both deceased and haunting The Seam – a type of limbo – and helping those with confuzzled deaths find their way to their full afterlife.

This is a Nonstop! issue from Black Caravan, which I believe tends to mean that it’s just a slice of a forthcoming trade, so these things sometimes don’t read well as one-shots if that trade isn’t necessarily written for single issue form. It’s hard to tell if that’s the case, here, because the Molinaris have also struggled with writing for book-by-book peaks, but either way, it’s unfortunately not a very grabbing issue if you’re not invested in the series already; it just kinda ends, with Scout / Black Caravan not even putting any To Be Continued, or ads for a forthcoming series. Whoops.

However, though this wouldn’t convince me to run down a second issue / trade, the contents do a quality job of better establishing Val as a standalone character, and give us some insight as to how Dad and son feel about / why they remain in The Seam. Val runs across another lost denizen, presumably whom he’ll help in the rest of the series, and it provides him someone of similar age and, perhaps, preceding experiences to compare to his own situation.

The colors are similar to the spot colors of Valentine but more expressive; it’s a good balance of grey tones and highlights. Rodríguez’s faces can be a little inconsistent – a sequence between Val and the professor has them looking quite different from other scenes – and the Molinaris maybe still don’t script the best action (and / or Jamie”s choreography is off), but there’s nothing here that takes you out of the story.