Coffin Hill Vol. 1 – Forest Of The Night collects the first seven issues of the Vertigo "ongoing" series from writer Caitlin Kittredge and artist Inaki Miranda. The series made it to 20 issues, not a bad run in the current market (the last issue was cover-dated September, 2015). I'm just catching up with it, and wish I had tried it sooner.
Eve Coffin is the protagonist, heiress to one of New England's richest families. But the family has a dark history in witchcraft, which Eve dabbled in as a troubled teenager. After a short career in the Boston police force--she became a hero after catching a serial killer, then was forced to retire after getting shot--she returns to the home she had run away from. In Coffin Hill she is quickly drawn into investigating a series of disappearances with a connection to the haunted Coffin Woods.
The series is full of flashbacks, principally to a defining event in 2003 with Eve and some friends in the woods. Something terrible happened, but the full impact doesn't become clear until close to the end of the first arc. The final issue in the collection, "The Sole Unquiet Thing," shows how Eve's mother Eleanor became acquainted with the darkness in the woods.
It's a really solid series, and has a definite "A Team" look about it, Dave Johnson's covers alone mark it as a comic worth a second look.
Replies
I picked up the first trade and thought it was ok... to be honest, I don't really remember much about it, however if it had a lot of flashbacks, that could explain things.
I'm getting to the point where any major amount of flashbacks is turning into a major turnoff for me. I know they're a method for creating depth and mystery, but so many shows and books are using the technique so often, (and usually so badly), that even when they're used relatively well, they're getting to be an annoyance for me.
The flashbacks can be a distraction, I agree. I thought they were well handled. But I'll admit that the last issue in the collection came as kind of a relief, being almost all flashback. It was a question of figuring out who the characters were, since they looked different from their appearances earlier in the series.
Coffin Hill Vol. 2 – Dark Endeavors collects issues #8-14 of the series. The first six issues contain the title arc, which makes the series appear more focused at first. But in fact there are still several stories being told in each issue: Eve's involvement in a serial killer case while a member of the Boston Police Department (2012); events in Coffin Hill, Massachusetts (present day); and Eve in jail in Boston (present day). The events in 2003 in the Coffin Hill forest appear to have been covered completely in the first collection.
The big new development in this arc is the appearance of witch hunters, which puts Eve and the witches still living in Coffin Hill into very real peril. It also turns out that there was a witchcraft connection in the serial murder case. No matter how much she tries, Eve can't escape her witch heritage.
Like the first collection, the seventh issue is devoted to a single flashback story, in this case Coffin Hill history from 1970. Series artist Inaki Miranda gets a break, with Ryan Kelly handling the art.