Penciller: Brad Walker
Inker: Andrew Hennessy
Colorist: Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
Review: Will Dubbeld
With those words, Jason Blood transmogrifies into the demon, Etrigan.
Birthed by Jack Kirby in the ‘70s, The Demon tells the tale of medieval knight Jason Blood, bound by fel magic to the titular demon. Upon reciting an eldritch poem, Blood calls upon the rhyming demon and woe befalls those in his path.
Or that’s at least the gist as I remember. It very well could have changed 6 or 8 times (because DCs gonna DC), but we’ll run with what we know...
Jason Blood and Etrigan have run amok across the DCU for decades, meddling in affairs both superhero and supernatural. Currently, Jason appears to be keeping only tenuous control of Etrigan and has retreated to a shack in Death Valley.
A little too on-the-nose, but hey, comics...
Plagued by nightmares involving a little girl trapped in a hellscape, Blood seeks solace in liquor bottles until the military misfires a nuke into the desert.
By coincidence or prophecy, the little girl from Blood’s nightmare is tooling through Death Valley with her family.
The plot, she thickens...
There’s a lot of slow burn in this issue, but we’re spared an origin recap, so praise be for that. Between throwing some of Jason’s pathos at the reader, some demonic possession, a nuclear explosion, and Madame Xanadu on a motorcycle, this comic has a lot going on and doesn’t get very far.
Not to its detriment, however. It seems like Andrew Constant has a lot of story to tell and has to juggle it in the span of 6 issues, so he’s manipulating the pacing accordingly.
The troops on art detail are absolutely on-point as well. The pencils have almost a ‘90s throwback quality to them, and I mean that as complimentary. I was reminded of that brief span, right around when pulps were giving way to slicks, when there were some phenomenal-looking comics. Like that first X-Men Unlimited series or any Spider-Man book within 10 feet of Mark Bagley.
It felt like that.
The inks are tight, and the colors pop beautifully, accenting the already sharp pencils. I’ve always thought a poor inker or colorist absolutely butchers the pencils, but that is certainly not the case here. There’s a rare synergy on these pages.
I’m quite fond of The Demon, so this essentially was a pre-sale for me. There’s been some tripe comics featuring the character, but this certainly doesn’t appear to be amoung them. DC has some phenomenal supernatural characters, possibly edging out Marvel in that department, and I’ll always gladly buy Deadman, Swamp Thing, and (of course) The Demon.
Hell, I even keep up on Constantine despite DCs best efforts to turn the character into a gutter magic Dr. Strange...
Hell is Earth should shape up to be quite the ride. DC can consider me all in for the series and any that may follow. This may even segue into Etrigan appearing in more monthly books.
One can hope, but until then we’ve got this miniseries to tide us over.
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