Bitter Root returns for more action-horror excellence in 1920s Harlem
When you live in a world of endless suffering, is it possible to stop hatred from corrupting your soul? In the reality of Image Comics’ Bitter Root, the Sangerye family has spent centuries fighting off Jinoo, humans transformed into deadly monsters by their hatred. Creators David F. Walker, Chuck Brown, and Sanford Greene use the Jinoo as a metaphor for bigotry and racism in Bitter Root’s first arc, but there’s a new breed of violent creature emerging in response to the Jinoo—one shaped by grief and trauma. Set in Harlem at the height of the Jazz Age, this action-horror series explores post-World War I race relations in the U.S. via fantastic circumstances, pulling from folklore and a tradition of Black speculative fiction to create a story as deep as it is exciting.
Walker and Greene previously worked together on the outstanding Power Man & Iron Fist series, where they developed strong creative chemistry by telling a street-level superhero story with a lot of style, personality, and heart. Greene’s bold expressions and distinct character design work brought Walker’s dialogue to life, and they made great use of the titular pair’s contrasting body types and fighting styles to inform the action. All of these strengths play a major role in Bitter Root’s appeal, and now they’re applied to a story the creators built from the ground up, adding more of their unique perspective plus a greater level of personal investment. The presentation still maintains a lot of superhero spectacle, but there’s greater attention given to how cycles of violence impact communities over time.
The Bitter Root logo design captures the book’s central themes in one evocative image: a gear train growing from the roots of a tree. It’s a fusion of the natural and the mechanical, the gears representing a new industrial age of innovation while the roots symbolize family legacy and a connection to the past. In Bitter Root #6, trees become an especially ominous visual motif via the new big bad, Adro, with her craggy tree bark face and hair that wraps around her in thick thorny branches. She strips Dr. Sylvester of his supernatural power and cradles his weakened body in a panel evoking a pietà, channeling the tender benevolence of Mary holding Jesus and contrasting it with Adro’s inherently sinister nature, which visually manifests in the swirl of branches closing in around them.
At the end of the issue, Adro takes Dr. Sylvester to Georgia, where they find a young black boy lynched and left hanging in a tree. Here we get another interpretation of tree imagery, tying it to the trauma that devastates black communities. Standing underneath the tree as residents of the town slowly discover the harrowing scene, Adro tells Dr. Sylvester: “Pain and anguish claws at the souls of all who loved that child hanging from this tree.” Each person in town is profoundly affected by the trauma of this lynching, leaving them vulnerable to an evil force that grows stronger from their suffering. These people have no avenue for justice, so when someone comes offering them retribution, it’s hard to see them rejecting her offer.