After a debut issue that checked every box of a compelling crime mystery, Seven Wives #2 returns on July 8th with plenty of questions still hanging in the air. Writer Zoe Tunnell’s series opened with a dead husband, seven possible suspects, and enough secrets to keep readers theorizing for weeks. Now, with detectives digging deeper into the lives, relationships, and contradictions surrounding the case, Seven Wives #2 has the opportunity to do what the best crime fiction does: complicate everything. At the halfway point of a three-issue IDW Crime series, new clues emerge, and old assumptions begin to crack. New light is shed on the mystery, and you will truly gasp by the end.
If the first issue showed how creepy the dead husband was to his wives, the second issue raises the temperature to a full-on monster. Tunnell and artist Tesslyn Bergin-Dicoi continue to use flashbacks to flesh out new perspectives on the past through the wives in this issue, and major revelations are unveiled. Of course, in any mystery, it’s hard to trust every narrator, especially after the cliffhanger of the last issue, but the second issue is quite good at making you not feel so bad for the departed.
Like any good mystery, the ball continues to bounce around as far as who the killer could be. In a fantastic opening, our two detectives consider the suspects, and Bergin-Dicoi does a great job showing each one possibly killing the husband with a neat shadow effect. It’s as if their imaginations are working to imagine each one doing the crime.
Exclusive preview of Seven Wives #2!
As the story unfolds, new perspectives unveil a far more violent situation that each has dealt with and secrets one can only imagine a psychopath is capable of. Given the religious element in the series, or maybe it’s a bit more like a cult, the idea that absolute power always corrupts is certainly explored. Things can get intense, and the human core of these characters shines through.
That’s largely thanks to Bergin-Dicoi’s pencils, with a keen strength in body language and facial expressions. Admittedly, the art can be a bit stiff or awkward, but never so much as to pull you out of the story, and much more a style choice.
Colors by Antonio Del Hoyo continue to create a sense of optimism as the detectives do their work. The days are bright, and the environments are quaint. They jive well with the themes of indoctrination, since things often seem normal when they’re far from it.
By the end of the issue, I challenge you not to be dying for the finale. Seven Wives #2 does exactly what a great middle chapter of a mystery series should do: it complicates every assumption while making the emotional stakes feel even more personal. Zoe Tunnell expertly peels back the layers of the deceased husband’s life, revealing a far darker and more disturbing figure than readers may have imagined. Meanwhile, Tesslyn Bergin-Dicoi’s expressive artwork and Antonio Del Hoyo’s deceptively bright color palette reinforce the unsettling contrast between outward appearances and hidden horrors. By the time the final pages land, the suspect list has shifted, the themes have deepened, and the need to know what happens next becomes almost unbearable.
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