An amazing, dreamlike, nightmarish, atmospheric fantasy/horror Western. This first issue doesn't so much build as gather up different strands of story in a single hand: you can tell they'll weave together, but not yet how. Images linger: a dead rabbit, a butterfly, a blood-streaked girl holding a gun; gorgeous pink and yellow skies; Death's daughter, with scars or stitches creasing her mouth. In a theatre made up of an open-air stage in the town square (probably they use it for hangings), tramps tell the story of Death's daughter with illustrated banners and Tarot cards. The entertainers are an old, blind white man and a young Indian girl in a vulture cloak; black homesteaders offer the man and the girl shelter; a white woman gunslinger hunts them down. Death's daughter rides through stories, coming when she's called to avenge your wrongs.

A single issue is hard to judge, but Pretty Deadly reminds me of Jeremy Love's Bayou, which rewrites American mythology and Alice in Wonderland to center on a black girl adventuring in the Jim Crow South and a fantastical and horrific underworld.