My favorite mini-series of 2021, following Ortensia Thomas, gun-for-hire, and Alexander Wortham, Revolutionary War soldier-turned-vampire. Southard starts each issue with a few pages of Ortensia as a blonde pigtailed girl trying to start up a home with her father in Oregon in 1848, culminating in the men her father hired killing him and sacrificing her.
The majority of each issue, though, is focused on Ortensia (now looking very different) and Alexander at various points through the 1860s. Each of those is its own adventure, often, but not always, involving them dealing with something supernatural, unholy, or just plain strange. I'm not at all sure what the thing they fought in issue 4, which Hahn draws initially a shriveled thing that subsequently Hulks out once it wakes up, was supposed to be.
Those sections aren't in chronological order, as issue 1 is set in 1868, and all the others are set in various earlier years. Which allows Southard to allude to certain things - such as Alexander's complaint in issue 1 about how they'll never reach the coast at this rate, or the preacher in issue 2's remarks about Ortensia - that don't make sense until later issues.
Despite the threats often revolving around cults or creatures that feast on humans, the tone of the stories is kept surprisingly light. Ortensia is unfazed by almost everything they encounter, and Alexander complains mostly about how little he enjoys violence and could they just try a peaceful discussion for once?
Maybe that's a strange approach, but as we see how Ortensia's past unfolded, her blase attitude makes more sense. She's seen worse, she's experienced worse. It also matches Hahn's art, which keeps the violence mostly (but not entirely) bloodless and definitely not graphic. Alexander isn't depicted as a brooding, terrifying creature of the night, but as a well-dressed man, who politely asks the bartender where he could find some livestock, because he's terribly thirsty. Even when he's drawn backlit, wings spreading from his back and only the glint of his eyes visible as men try futilely to shoot him to death, he's yelling at them to stop shooting him, rather than vowing death or anything of that sort.
Plus, it gives the two leads more opportunity to talk, which gives Southard more opportunity to play their personalities off each other. Ortensia's grim determination, where she tends to stay focused on what's straight ahead of her, against Alexander's nervous glancing around as they walk into danger. He's been a vampire for far longer than Ortensia's been what she's become, but he seems to be clinging to his survival instinct a lot harder.
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