Bigger Than Capes

Writer: Heather Palmer
Artist: Kirsty Hunter
Additional Colouring: Jaye Stacey
Flatter: Holly McKend

Smithers & Wing follows the titular Flora Smithers and August Wing, partners in both supernatural investigation, and life, seeing how they’re married. In this sixty two page comic they’re hired by Mhairi Baird, a concerned teacher, to investigate the disappearance of Catriona Hewitt. Mhairi is convinced there’s something suspicious about Catriona going missing that the police have missed.

While Smither’s & Wing starts out as a fairly standard missing persons case it doesn’t take long for the supernatural elements to make an appearance, which is where things get really interesting. There’s a good emotional backbone as we follow the two protagonists, who feel well fleshed out throughout this story, we learn a lot about them both quite quickly with the main narrative constantly pushing forward even while we learn about the past. 

Although we’ve had plenty of stories following supernatural investigators at this point, there’s a lot to Smithers & Wing that I feel sets it apart from its contemporaries. Firstly there’s it’s commitment to representation which is always a positive in my book. Then we’ve got the uniqueness of telling this kind of story anywhere but the United States, there’s just something nice about seeing Edinburgh represented in comics, that creates a different feel than the vast amount of comics that find themselves anchored to the US.

This is a great introduction to the world of Smithers & Wing, while we’re treated to a look into their lives and given a little bit of both protagonists’ histories I feel like there’s plenty of room for Heather Palmer and Kirsty Hunter to expand on the story that’s established here.

You can preorder a physical copy of Smithers & Wing from Etsy

Or you can check out the webcomic here