The Pleasures of A Prequel...

Before resuming my rundown of the second half of Supernatural Season Two, I thought I'd take a moment to explore the Winchester family backstory a bit more in the trade paperback collection of the Wildstorm six-issue mini-series: Supernatural - Origins.

Picking up the story in the immediate aftermath of Mary Winchester's horrific death at the hands of an unseen demon, Origins follows John Winchester's attempts to come to terms with his wife's murder while looking after their two young sons.

Eventually he is saved from a bar brawl by psychic Missouri Moseley who puts him on a path that eventually leads to Harvelle's Roadhouse and the community of monster hunters.

As in the show about his grown sons, John has to do the legwork and research to put the clues together - nothing is handed to him on a plate and there are no 'lucky breaks'.

Accompanied by an anonymous hunter, John embarks on an epic quest which ends at the Fore Inn (anagram of Inferno) and an incredibly surreal series of challenges before he is finally confronted with a tiny insight into what's really going on.

TV/film spin-off comics are usually, more often than not, pretty poor; pointless stories that go nowhere, often written by someone with only a fan's grasp of a show's mythology, but Origins was penned by Supernatural's co-executive producer Peter Johnson and would make either a great double-episode of the show or a powerful standalone horror film.

Johnson is not only a great comic book writer, but clearly has as good a handle on the characters and their environment as any writer on the show.

Art is supplied by Matthew Dow Smith, who is clearly from the Mike 'Hellboy' Mignola school of artists. At first glance it might look a bit difficult to absorb, but it flows beautifully and given the speed the story moves, more detailed art might slowed the pace.

Supernatural: Origins was a genuine surprise. So often I've been burned by licenced titles; with my vain hope that they might actually add something to their source material, but this really does and given the strong argument in favour of the canonicity of this tale (i.e. the author's pedigree) this is a genuine 'must read' for fans of Supernatural.