Wynonna Earp: Strange Inheritance

Wynonna Earp (collected editions) #v.1-3

by Beau Smith, Joyce Chin (Artist), Luis Díaz (Artist)

Wynonna Earp, descendant of the famous lawman, follows in Wyatt's shoes, but with one she brings the unnatural to justice! Redneck, trailer trash, drug-running vampires, bounty-hunting biker werewolves, immortal desperadoes, an ancient mummy hitman and the Egyptian these are the kinds of perpetrators that covert U.S. Marshal Wynonna Earp hunts down on a regular basis. Collects all of the early tales including the original mini-series, plus "Home on the Strange," "Blood is the Harvest," and "The Yeti Wars."

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book, Fiction, Vampires

312 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 26, 2016

About the author

Beau Smith is the former VP of Marketing and Publishing for Eclipse Comics, Image Comics, Todd McFarlane Productions/McFarlane Toys, and IDW Publishing. He currently serves as director of product information for toy maker JUN Planning USA.
Currently Beau is enjoying a busy career as a freelance writer of comics, video games, films, novels and newspaper columns, as well as working on a consultant basis in the entertainment industry.
Having spent 15 years as one of the most prolific comic book writers around, he has written for such publishers as DC Comics, Image Comics, Eclipse Comics, Dreamwave Studios, Moonstone Books, Dark Horse Comics, and Capcom video games. He has also done dialogue script work for major motion picture studios.
Smith has written for such characters as Batman, Superman, Wolverine, Boba Fett, and Jack Bauer, as well as creating his own properties Primate, Wynonna Earp, Parts Unknown, Maximum Jack, Courting Fate, Lost and Found, and Cossack.
Upcoming comic book projects include: Maximum Jack, Courting Fate, Fight Squad, and Expiration Date.

Reviews

[Larakaa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought the collection after I watched the first season of the Wynonna Earp TV show, which I really liked.
But I was quite disappointed from reading this one. Here Wynonna is a huge boobed cheesecake blonde sexist image of a woman. It's really sad to see those depictions of women in comics of the 90s. The final third of the collection gets better. Wynonna has a more normal body and it's coverbed by normal clothes. You can totally see the difference between this story from 2011 and the earlier ones.

I'll try to get my hands on recent Earp comics to see how the character is treated nowadays.

[Veronica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Art is garbage, writing is poor, unclear why the protagonist is wandering around in her underwear while she's working, even less clear if the artist has ever seen a human woman if he thinks breasts project at those angles, all-around awful. Tin star, I don't think you tried at all.

[Seizure Romero · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is really, really bad.

I saw this show on Netflix and since I love occult detective monster-stomping badassery, I watched the first episode. It is terrible. The dialogue is awful, the action scenes are poorly timed, the actors seem unsure of themselves and their delivery is clunky. The pacing of pretty much everything is off. Fun idea, bad execution (oh, Buffy, where art thou? Joss & Co. pretty much ruined this genre for everyone). Couldn't justify sitting through another episode.

I noticed in the credits the show was based on this comic series. The book is always better, right?

Nope. Nopenopenope uh-uh nyet aw-HELLS-no.

It's like they used the same writers (did they? I can't be arsed to research it). Most (but not all) of the art features an extreme-boobage fan-service impossibly-proportioned action-girl hero. I didn't find any broken spine poses, so there's that (oh, wait. There are a few in the gallery at back). The last story tones down the sexy-time art a bit, but there are at least two pages in which the 'dialogue' consists entirely of monsters growling and snarling at each other while they fight ("ROOOOAAR" "SNAAAARL" "GUUUUUUURRRGGGLEEE"... I am not making this shit up).

I am really sad that the library paid $29.99 for this. I hope they got an institutional discount.

[Raj · Rating 2 out of 5]

I suspect like many people, I came to this via the TV show from the mid 2010s, and in that context, it's a bit of a shock to the system. The 90s and early 00s were not great for women in comics, as the awful representation of Wynonna here show. In the first two thirds of the book, she's pure cheesecake: scantily clad, with physics-defying breasts and big guns. The final third, which was written in 2011 fares better. The art now depicts Wynonna with a more believable body shape and sensible dress. The big guns are still around though. It also really leans into that 90s/00s ultra-violence thing as well.

In terms of storytelling, it's also very different to the TV show. Rather than an unwilling member of the Black Badge Division, Wynonna is recruited and is an enthusiastic member of the Division, travelling the country, shooting paranormal things until they stop arguing. Whereas the TV show restricts the action to a single town and its surrounding areas, the comic goes all over the US, from the mid-west to New York to Alaska. I do wonder what made some TV execs look at this comic and decide that they wanted to buy the rights to it. Especially given how differently the TV show turned out from the source material.

It's maybe interesting from an historical perspective, but it's not that great, to be honest, and maybe only one for a completist. I'm just glad that I read it through Kindle Unlimited and didn't pay any money for it.

[Tee Cee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4½ really

This volume was fun. The art was good & the narrative light. The wisecracking quips got a bit much, felt like I was watching a 40s movie. The jokes were that stale and predictable. But, other than a quick pause for a mental eye roll, they fit in with the tone of the tale. Worth the time of the read.

[Matthew Lloyd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let's get this out of the way first: I love Wynonna Earp, the television show about a descendant of famous lawman Wyatt Earp who fights to break the curse placed on her family with a bunch of beautiful, queer, supernatural allies. That's why I picked up this book. And the part of me that should've been an English Literature student enjoyed it. At some points, all of me enjoyed it. But my overall impression was twofold: deep respect for the creative team behind the television show for mining the gold out of such meagre material; and appreciation for how much better a largely female creative team on the television show handles a supernatural detective that is a woman compared to the handling by a largely male creative team on the comic book.

Beau Smith's original Wynonna Earp comics were published in three separate runs (plus one short story) by Image Comics (the first five issues) and IDW (the rest). The first three comics set Wynonna up as a supernatural detective fighting drug-running "trailer trash" vampires led by Bobo Del Ray, who would go on to become a much more interesting antagonist in the television show. It's terrible, but in a gratuitous, pulpy, '90s comic book way that makes it weirdly enjoyable. I give no small amount of the credit for this to Joyce Chin's artwork, which gives Wynonna a bulky, muscular physique emphasised by powerful stances and ridiculous blood-splatter and allows her to stand alongside contemporaries like Lara Croft and Xena as an literally strong female character. It's not what I'd want from a contemporary hero, but as something produced twenty years ago I can get behind it. The second arc, the last two issues with Image, completely ruin this. The art is bad; the characterisation terrible; the antagonists racist caricatures. The violence begins to suck any sense of tension out of the plot in a way that I found a major problem with the rest of the series. There's a coda in which Smith almost seems to recognise these problems, but it's difficult to see how he failed to tackle them given the creator-driven nature of Image Comic's set-up.

For all of this first-run's other problems there's also a major one of definition and characterisation: Why was it necessary for Wynonna to be descended from Wyatt? After a six year gap (1997 to 2003), Beau Smith was able to answer this question in "Home on the Strange", a three-issue arc that is the main basis of the television show. But this hiatus contained another major inspiration for the creators of television Wynonna: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's unclear to me if Buffy had much of an impact on comic Wynonna, although the attempts at humour that now pepper the dialogue suggest it. One definite influence, though, is Dana Scully of The X-Files, whose dress-sense and hairstyle must have influenced Carlos Ferreira's depiction of Wynonna. Clearly, Wynonna's revival was intended to place her alongside the female luminaries of supernatural detectivism.

Nevertheless, "Home on the Strange" doesn't quite work for me. The antagonists are poorly defined; Wynonna's motivation is unclear (beyond "it's her job"); the actions and jokes just don't quite land. To save some time: this is also exactly my criticism of the 2011 revival "The Yeti Wars". In both cases, these stories are backed up by solid artwork; it's really the writing that fails to captivate me. Focusing on the US Marshals storming an enemy stronghold rather than investigating and uncovering evidence, there just isn't enough story beyond shooting things and changes in the tide of the single long battle they each cover.

I want to make special mention of the short story "Blood is the Harvest". Despite its brevity, it's the story that most clearly characterised Wynonna as a snarky, experienced, effective paranormal investigator; significantly, I also laughed out loud at a couple of the jokes. It's twist might have lost a little impact from the fact that, in comic book form, we haven't seen Wynonna do much routine investigating, but familiarity with the genre will carry the story through.

Overall, I think that this volume will interest two parties: those who like slightly crummy, pulpy, supernatural comics, and those (like me) who want to see the genesis of the television series, even if it is nowhere near as good. Despite the low rating, I am glad I read it; I just wouldn't strongly recommend that anyone else do so.

[Cale · Rating 1 out of 5]

I heard good things about the TV show, so when I saw this collection of all the comic precursors, I picked it up. All I can say is I really hope the show jettisoned most of its source material, because most of this is really bad. It starts out with two series that epitomize the worst of the 90s comics style (excessive gore, poor writing, hypersexualization of every female character (Wynonna's breasts are 90% the size of her head. Each), men who look like cro-magnons, and a focus on poor puns and innuendo surrounding what hardly even qualifies as a story). The one somewhat unique aspect, the hillbilly version of the monsters, isn't near enough to make this worth reading, and the later collections, written one and two decades later hardly improve on the complaints (the second volume, with a mummy, actually goes even further on the oversexualization of Wynonna). I honestly can't see how anyone could read this and think it deserved a life in any other medium. There's nothing really novel here, the villains are like Supernatural rejects, and Wynonna has no personality; she's an 80's action hero with breasts. There's a tiny bit of world building with immortal enemies of Earp that makes no sense after a minute's thought, and the types of monsters that are thrown in are scattershot. So if you're a fan of the show, do yourself a favor and avoid this - once you see where it came from, you may lose all respect for it (or perhaps, you'll respect it more for rising above such embarrassing beginnings). And for anyone else, just skip it. There's nothing redeeming here.

[Jonathan Combs · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you don't like Top Cow you won't like this. If you like Top Cow you probably still won't like this. The art is inconsistent and confusing and looks like a poorly trained Mark Silvestri clone with delirium tremens. Then, just to make things more confusing, they change artists and all the "fan service" gets toned down, although the impossible anatomy and cleavage remains.The coloring, the lettering, the writing are all done better elsewhere. The plot was a stretch and the "zingers" which were supposed to be funny were so predictable, I could swear I heard a rim shot in the background. If you're going to have a female heroine try something different, like not making her breasts the size of personal watermelons, not making her choice of outerwear thongs and disintegrating shirts, and not requiring her to seek validation and sex from men at every turn.

There was even a point at which the author interjects himself into the book and begs the heroine not to choose another writer after the book comes off a hiatus. He specifically asks that Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis or Warren Ellis not replace him. It is a sure sign of Dunning-Kruger when a writer of this low caliber thinks he belongs in the same sentence with those big guns.

[Sofia M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was fun to see where the inspiration to create one of my favorite characters of all time came from.

[Shandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dang it! The phone app ate my review, apparently. I worked so hard to type it all out with my thumbs, too! Sheesh.

Basically, this Wynonna Earp is very male-gaze eye candy, especially the first full comic run in this collection. The short, prologue comic has her fully dressed, with a baseball cap even, looking like she could be the law enforcement officer she is in the story. Then the next collection has her drawn with huge boobs, and clothes that definitely could only be painted on in comics, as they would not stay on in real life without a boat-load of glue. Her pants were so low cut, they hardly qualified as underwear, and her shirt was more like a t-shirt bra, cropped so high and low. I couldn't stand to read more than two pages, and nearly chucked the whole book right there.

Since I had this on loan from another library system, though, I tried to make it worth the time and staff effort of getting it to me, so I flipped pages, quickly, until I saw a page where she was actually dressed. It was the second full comic run (I've returned the book, so I can't remember any of the titles, sorry - that was in the review eaten by the app), and she was in a wintry setting, so she actually wore a coat! Luckily, she stayed mostly dressed (clingy t-shirt, no bra look aside) when she returned to Arizona, so I kept reading. The story wasn't bad, and the next one (something about a Yeti) was the best of the bunch, partly because she actually dressed like a member of a covert, black ops agency for a change.

The story is definitely different than the tv series, which I adore. I read this hoping to find some answer to questions I had about the characters/events in the tv show, and alas, none of those questions were answered here. I enjoyed a few moments of this book, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, particularly if the tv show is what brought you here.

[S Hollingsworth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I want to start out by saying that few things in life give me such joy as finding out a tv show I enjoy has source material. However, this was a MASSIVE disappointment after watching the show. Let's just say the early issues are astonishingly bad. The art is confusing and unclear. Wynonna's character is undefined outside her physical appearance which is a unrealistic and insulting portrayal of femininity through the lens of the male gaze. Beyond that, the world building is inconsistent and mediocre. The 2011 series was better, but my opinion of this collection couldn't recover from the first five issues. I know it's par for the course for 90s comic books to portray female heroines in the same way and Wynonna Earp is not the only offender. If you are a fan of the show, I would say miss this collection. The story from the comics has very little in common with the show and none of the characters besides Wynonna Earp make appearances in the original collection. It isn't worth it.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wynonna Earp: Strange Inheritance is a mixed bag of a collection. The early iterations are straight out of a 12 year old boys fantasies - the absurdly designed female lead who's proportions are exaggerated Barbie dollesque, weak story line filled with suggestive dialogue, and bad guys who shoot worse than a stormtrooper in Star Wars.
Later issues, particularly the one with the scarecrow and the Egyptian deity are a little more light-hearted and fun, though still holding questionable content for some readers. It's nice to see that the character evolved after the first cancel...er hiatus, though it was honestly the SyFy show that made me seek out the books and if all I had read was this one, I would not have followed up with the character. Wynonna Earp Vol. 1: Homecoming is a much better look at the character.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of the TV show based on this character and was excited to read the stories that inspired it. Initially I was a little disappointed because the original is nothing like the show and I was definitely not a fan of the way she was drawn in the first story. But as I got into reading more of this collection I came to really like it. It's campy and kind of cheesy (intentionally so, I'm guessing) and the stories were fun. The artwork in The Yeti Wars was my favorite because it was the most realistic. The artists for the first two stories should have their fingers broken for drawing a woman that way - Wynonna Earp deserves to be drawn as more than a teenage boy's wet dream (a waist that tiny with breasts that big would have her either falling forward constantly or wearing a back brace).

[Jenette · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was atrocious. Possibly the worst thing I've ever read and I have read some truly appalling fanfiction in my time. Even if you overlooked the fact that Wynonna spends her early iteration practically naked (and overlooking that would take some work) you can't get passed the fact that the early stories in this collection are lacking in depth and detail that would sell you the story. The background details are non-existent and the characters seem shallow, pointless and well, I'd prefer they just be erased from existence.

It does get better. Wynonna puts clothes on and loses half her boobs. The plot doesn't get any better though it does develop something that vaguely resembles detail. Not a lot.

The tv show is a million times better.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started watching the SyFy show Wynonna Earp, and it is great. The comic it is based off of, is OK. Not bad. Interesting.

I hated the first few stories where Wynonna was dressed like a cowboy hooker with huge, huge, huge breasts and a tiny waist, plus her thong hanging out. It was distracting and her dialogue was pretty bland in those issues also.

The rest of the volume had some good/decent stories going on, there were many bad puns/jokes (just FYI that is a plus for me! haha), and her clothing made more sense.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good and funny stories of pre-Syfy Wynonna Earp, even the slim Blood is the Harvest one-shot had a comical argument that gave a good chuckle.
If anything, the different art style could be a slight doozy (especially from Prologue to the first miniseries), but the Home on the Strange issues had my favorite artwork as it reminded me of the Archangels comics I'd read back in the day.

[Jason · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very different than the show. I could tell that going in. The 1st arc was jus over sexualized and I just looked at it as a product of its time (1996) and laughed it off as camp value. The next arc came off really racist. For example called the bad guys from Egypt “Sand Stooges”. Probably was acceptable at the time, but...No thanks.

[Kaitlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really loved the TV show Wynonna Earp, and I'm all caught up and thought that I would check out the original comics, but honestly I thought the comics were pretty terrible. The more recent stuff was a little better, but I still didn't care about it at all, and I was really uncomfortable with most of the portrayals of Wynonna.

[Brandi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got this through interlibrary loan because I've been watching the SyFy Wynonna Earp show. This graphic novel is a hot mess. The art is horrid and sexist. The story--I have NO idea how the show came from this graphic novel. I gave up on it as just not worth my time. Have fun if you like it; it was definitely not for me.

[Niche · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay

Has a standard Dynamite/zenescope vibe. I was curious to see the TV show's origins, it mostly shares names and lose setting. It wasn't really for me, but still found it more entertaining than the show in a cheesey pulp manner.

[CJ - It's only a Paper Moon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of 90s schlock and 90s drawing. It was....an interesting ride.

[nidah05 (SleepDreamWrite) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't heard of this before until I started watching the show. So after reading this it was interesting, weird but interesting. Art style at times is good to okay. The show is also good.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stereotypical graphics, unfortunately. I love the TV series

[Tesla Writer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need more!! More adventures of the Originale Wynonna Earp 😍 Loved it!

[Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow the show is just so much more entertaining

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t finish this. It wasn’t very good. I’ll stick to the show.

[Nsrcda88 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit I did not know what to expect after having seen the tv show first, but I really enjoyed this. Obviously a different Wynonna than seen in the tv show but still a badass.

[Steve Chaput · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd heard of the character before, but until the TV series started I hadn't actually read any of her various series. If you're like me the current Wynonna Earp series from IDW is familiar enough, with the art capturing the characters as we see them on the show. This volume, which collects the characters earlier appearances is quite different.

The best part of the book is that Beau Smith, Wynonna's creator, writes all the stories and that shines. Even in the darkest moments, Smith allows Wynonna's humor and humanity shine through. The lady has had a pretty bad life, but that hasn't soured her completely. Smith gives her an edge, and it's easy to see why producers wanted to bring the woman to live-action. Smith has been writing comics since the '80s and his sense of humor comes out in almost all of his stories.

The art, on the other hand, isn't bad, but rather, except for an opening tale, makes Wynonna completely different from the Wynonna we see in the series. The earliest tales have her looking and dressing more like Pamela Anderson in the film Barb Wire. Tall, blonde and very buxom, with her clothes seemingly sprayed on. Knowing that that first series was ending, Smith writes himself into the final pages and is confronted by Wynonna on some of that, even making a joke about Anderson. The later series, The Yeti Wars, scales back on that fan service, but Wynonna is still a blonde, if down a few cup-sizes and actually wearing clothes that aren't quite as clinging. or revealing. Probably a good thing as the story takes place a bit further north than most of her tales. Hell, Smith even creates a character based on himself who works with Wynonna. Fun stuff.

Again, art aside the book is a lot of fun and I think a fan of either the current comic or the TV series will have a lot of fun seeing the character in her early incarnation.

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read the paperback series because I was interested in the publicity about the character due to the Sci-fi series which will begin its 2nd season early next year. I am a fan of Westerns and immediately like Wynonna Earp. The early stories was great but a little disappointing because the lead character was made into a typical t & a stereotypical character. The most of the 90's was like that with most of the female characters oversexualized.

The other stories turned out to be great and loved the change in the character. I am looking forward to more Wynonna Earp stories and will watch the series.

[⚔️Sarah⚔️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed being able to see how the comic evolved over the years it has been published. Two important things that have remained constant through all the issues is how badass Wynonna Earp is and the fun tone of the whole piece. I really love it and it's a fun, empowering read.