What I Bought 12/6/2017 - Part 2

My neighbor downstairs I complained about last month came up last week and apologized. Turns out it really was the people in the apartment behind me who were the problem. Will wonders never cease? For today's post, we've got the first issue of a mini-series, and the last one of those three Marvel Legacy books I wanted to try. Will the mini-series fare better with me than Ragman did?

The Demon: Hell is Earth #1, by Andrew Constant (writer), Brad Walker (penciler), Andrew Hennessy (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - It's never a good thing when both Etrigan and Jason Blood are smiling. If they're actually agreed upon a course of action, the title will be extremely accurate.

Jason's been having nightmares of a young girl, which have brought him to Death Valley. The young girl is on a vacation with her family, also plagued by the nightmares. Madame Xanadu is charging in on a motorcycle, hoping to avert whatever is about to happen. And then a test missile crashes in the desert, with a real warhead. A warhead of something unconventional.

Don't think I've read anything drawn by Brad Walker in a while. His Jason Blood looks fairly haggard, his Etrigan has a bit of that Kirby style, which I mostly notice in the Demon's hands. The squared off nails, the thick fingers that almost look like he's carved from rock. I guess most artists hew to the original design, but I've grown used to John McCrea's almost skeletal, oddly proportioned Etrigan. Anyway, Walker's Etrigan is a hulking wall, an almost solid mass, looming over everyone else. Even in panels that are supposed to focus on Blood, Etrigan barges he way in, either physically or via internal narration.

The idea of Blood floating about offering commentary on Etrigan's actions isn't that novel to me, I assumed since Etrigan could do so to him that it worked both ways, but I am curious what the deal is with the little girl, and how they're going to keep Etrigan involved in this story, since it's hard for me to see him objecting to Hell being unleashed on Earth.

Darkhawk #51, by Chad Bowers and Chris Sims (writers), Kev Walker (artist), Jeff Tartaglia (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Chris Powell looks awfully young there, unless it's meant to be a flashback to when he found the amulet.

Chris is a rookie cop now, trying to be the man he thought his father was (before he learned he was dirty). The amulet hasn't worked in a year, which hasn't stopped two of the Fraternity of Raptors from coming for the amulet. I didn't remember the suits having their own kind of sentience, but apparently Powell had an impact on his, and it had been trying to disconnect the member of the Fraternity from their access to the suits. He and Powell come to an understanding and prepare to head into space to contend with the Raptors. Issue end.

Of the three of these I bought, this is the one I feel like spends the most time recapping origin stuff, but also the one trying most seriously to set up something in motion for future stories. I wonder if Sims and Bowers could have gotten things to where they wanted without quite so much rehashing old stories, some of it feels unnecessary. I think it's meant to bring Powell back to the start before taking the first step on a new beginning. So make him a cop like his father, but making the choice to be a clean cop. Send him back to where he first got the amulet, give him a choice to keep it or not, accept the challenge or not, this time with a better sense of what that means.  And this is the one I'd most want to see going forward, if only out of some vain hope I'd get to see all the stuff I wanted from the Abnett/Lanning cosmic run.

When Powell accepts the amulet again, Kev Walker gives it a new design, and I'm not a fan. Remember how in the new 52, Jim Lee gave a bunch of heroes needlessly busy costumes, with seams on them suggesting interlocking armor pieces? That's kind of what Walker goes for here, in addition to even bigger shoulder pads than Darkhawk's traditionally had. And I know a belt may seem a strange accessory for a partially sentient armor, but I think the new look could use it. Compared to how the old armor looks when he draws it, I can't consider it an improvement.

All that said, Walker uses the jagged, broken panels he favors to good effect here. During the fight in the House of Mirrors, where the way the panels are set up combines with the reflections of the characters to be almost disorienting, and plays into Powell's confusion with everything that's going on. And during the reveal of what the suit has been up to while away from Powell, where you figure we're only catching glimpses of what's being revealed to Chris, or that this is how it gets processed by him - brief flashes, only barely connected by the spiel he's getting from the suit. And there's one panel of Chris reflecting on his past in the rain where I just really like the lighting and shadows Tartaglia gives it. Powell looks so much older and more thoughtful in those panels, at the moment he's going to be presented with a decision about who he wants to be.