Quote from Mallez -R-Christo on July 14, 2022, 8:54 am

From the pages of Objection Overruled Part II, we finally have Officer Sophie's backstory. This comic tells us about Sophie's misadventures: who she was before she ran into Viktor Popov and her people, how she was kidnapped and what happened to her after the orgy in the Popov Mansion.

Although the plot of Red in Tooth & Claw focuses on the degradation of the policewoman, she is not the protagonist of this story. That weight falls on the shoulders of Fei, a young Chinese exchange student and the best friend of the captain of the local American football team: Harry (Sophie's boyfriend). This being a Kitty Hand story, we will discover that Fei is, without a doubt, the WORST Best Friend a man can have. And, little by little, it will be revealed to us how the young Chinese is much more than he appears to be.

I will start the review by saying that this comic is a delight, as far as morbid content is concerned. There is a lot of material to take in: from pages showing us the harsh indoctrination of the policewoman to scenes with orgies worthy of a Greek bacchanal, as well as beautiful women wearing detailed S&M outfits and being relegated to mere pieces of meat for the pleasure of others. I will add that Sophie's “police outfit” seems to me to be one of the best fetish outfits I've seen in a long time (at least, from the DoFantasy comics), since they highlight the degradation that the character has reached.

I like how the author shows us how the reluctance of Harry's character, due to the disappearance of his girlfriend, prevented him from saving Sophie from her fate on a couple of occasions. The climax of this being when Fei surprises the football team, introducing them to several MASKED WOMEN in the locker room to fuck. A morbid delicacy. As well as Sophie's little flashes of rebellion, quickly snuffed out by the punishment of her tormentors.

The introduction of Fei, together with her father and her servants, seems ingenious to me. He serves both to connect various stories of the KHU (Kitty Hand Universe) and to lay the groundwork for future stories. Various references and character cameos lend further validity to this point; with characters from Classmates Claire's Tales or Objection Overruted. Obviously, this will not be the last time we hear from Fei and her family.

As for the technical section, I will not dwell too much on this point because I do not have much to say. The composition of the panels is fine, the design of Kitty Hand's characters improves significantly with the passage of the comics and the color palette seems appropriate to me. I liked a couple of pop culture references used in the dialogue, like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings or a famous line from the Dead Poets Society; a point in favor for Sarenaph.

Now, the negative aspects of the comic. This story is a spin-off of Objection Overruled Part II, and it shows a lot in the first third of the comic. I feel like, if I didn't know the context of the event at the Popov Mansion, I wouldn't really know why there was an orgy there in the first place, or how Sophie was trained to become the Popov's pet. Also, towards the end (more specifically, in the soccer team party scene) we will already know very well what Sophie's fate will be, so it becomes predictable in that aspect. And some dialogues have punctuation errors, missing commas with vocatives. However, such aspects do not at all tarnish the good things that this comic has.

Although Red in Tooth & Claw seems to me to be a good comic, which tells us about the fall and degradation of a beautiful policewoman at the hands of corrupt men, while expanding the lore much more, it's much more enjoyable when you have read the previous histories of this universe.

My rating: 4/5