What I Bought 1/10/2022 - Part 2

So, as this is the last new comic of 2021 for me, all next week will be the 2021 Comics in Review posts. It's nice to know what I'm going to post about ahead of time.

Black Jack Demon #3, by Nick Hermes - The Joker could take lessons on unsettling smiles from that guy.

Silas is now a prisoner of the demon, although it insists it won't harm him. In fact, it wants him to kill it, just not until they reach the Pacific Ocean. It's even willing to go hunt for Silas, since he's such an incompetent boob. This does not stop Silas from trying to kill him, but none of it takes. The demon finds a vein of gold and gets Silas a chunk that will buy everything he needs to kill the demon as it wishes, and then some. This involves a boat, explosives, and lots and lots of chains. The demon is quite satisfied, until Silas mentions he's going to use the rest of the money from that chunk of gold to go back to his family mine and dig up the demon's treasure. It really doesn't want him to do that, but it go blown up so I'm sure it's fine.

Most of the issue is brief conversations between Silas and the demon. Little things it reveals. That it's learning English from a Bible, but it's more comfortable with Latin. That it abducted Silas because it knew he would be willing to travel all the way to San Francisco if it meant he got to kill it. Whereas the sheriff  and his posse from last issue wouldn't. Quite why it needs to die in the sea I don't know. Because water is the opposite of fire?

The other thing that comes out is that Silas is already looking ahead. Not just his plan to find the treasure the demon stole, which I'm guessing is not what he thinks it is. But also that he wants to see Dorothy, the girl he met last issue, again and convince her to come back with him. The desire for revenge isn't all-consuming. Maybe it hasn't been ever since he met Dorothy. Maybe it hasn't ever been all-consuming. If it was, he wouldn't have run away when he was confronted with it at the end of the first issue.

We get to see the demon's true form, or the closest thing to it so far, and it's not what I would have expected. It's like a mannequin, face devoid of any features, same with the body. Although it seems to have blades that come out of each forearm. Silas describes it as being the same color as the licorice he was eating (hence, "black jack"). It's a curious stylistic choice. It makes it easier for the demon to wear the skin of others as a disguise, but why that approach? Why a demon that tries to hide its nature?

I don't think the series ends here, but I've not seen a solicitation for issue 4 yet, so who knows.

What I Bought 10/4/2021 - Part 1

I managed to get almost everything I was still looking for from September. I'm hoping I might find the one comic I didn't on Friday, but we'll see. For today, we've got one title reaching the end of Act One, I guess, and another that's still just getting going.

You Promised Me Darkness #5, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Annabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - Sage's stomach looks a little like a face.

Sage's big plan seems to kind of go bust. Sort of. His crew actually do pretty well trouncing the Anti-Everything's supporters, but Sage himself gets controlled by the two lovers, Diva and Ophelia and flattens Sebastian. Yuko's power somehow shuts them down by showing them the darkness that holds them all back, and then taking it in.

Then the Anti-Everything seems to kill her. Sebastian loses his shit and between he and a couple of Sage's folks also out for revenge, kills the Anti-Everything. But that's not the end of his malignancy, and the path leads to Alaska. Sebastian's being guided there by Yuko, or something in the shadows calling itself Yuko. Hell if I know which, and since I don't think I'm going to buy Follow Me Into The Darkness whenever it shows up, I suppose I never will.

I don't know how I feel about the ending. The idea that this didn't really "save the world" doesn't bother me. There's always going to be something bad happening. Stop one, another problem will come along, or make itself known if it was already there. I'm curious about whether Sage was manipulated, set up to go this way, or if his plan was just bad all along. Is it important that Yuko (if it is Yuko) becomes part of the darkness? If so, important to who? When she speaks to Sebastian, she mentions the comet as if it's part of something. 'The comet and I. . .we weren't.' Is the comet working to some purpose?

You know me, the hypotheticals are always catching my attention, but I really can't deal with the art style. It's gotten easier to follow, maybe that's Connelly or maybe I'm just getting used to it. Either way, it hasn't grown on me as I hoped. The book may have promised darkness, but some of these pages tip too far into it. Outside of a few examples, any time action starts happening, it's not too clear what's I'm supposed to be seeing.

Black Jack Demon #2, by Nick Hermes (writer/artist) - Once again, crime doesn't pay. If you get caught.

Silas is still chasing the demon, with limited success. Horse died, couldn't rope well enough to keep a job at a ranch, got mugged in the next town he came to, after getting laughed at by a cute, intelligent girl. He steals a horse, gets waylaid by the sheriff in the next town he comes to. Sheriff does have a posse out hunting a mysterious "leper" who attacked some people. Silas gets away from John Law and his dipshit, Bible-thumping Barney Fife and into the hills. Finds his demon right about the time the sheriff and the posse find their "leper", wondering why the kid is so intent on him. The demon points Silas out, then grabs him and does a Hulk leap into the sky.

I mentioned in my review of issue 1 Hermes' art reminds me of the old EC horror comics, or maybe just Golden Age comics in general. The large amount of smaller panels, the almost garish coloring, even just the way he draws the characters, a little old-fashioned compared to more recent artists. In the first issue, the demon was kept entirely in shadow if seen at all.

This issue, we get to see it more clearly and it's reminiscent of a super-hero a bit. The cloak with the hood, the bright purple shirt that shows off the musculature. Has some bandages across parts of his (green?) face. Not a mask, but sort of close. Was somehow able to sense Silas hiding in the bushes behind him. When he does the super-leap, the cloak is trailing behind him and he's got one arm extended in front of him, pretty classic flying hero pose. Not sure what the significance is yet, if any. We'll see if Hermes changes how he depicts the demon again in issue 3.

One thing about the writing is sometimes I feel as though I'm missing pieces of the conversation. Silas gets information out of a general store owner by pretending to have seen a leper in town. No one has mentioned this up to then, and it's just the two of them in the building. Yet the two girls, who already left, somehow know Silas is asking about the leper. 

But it fits with how Silas is losing track. He realizes after escaping from jail that he's not only missed Christmas, but his birthday somewhere along the line. Time had ceased to exist for him, only the chase on his mind. When that's taken away from him, when he can't pursue, then those thoughts can intrude again. Like the thoughts about how he already had a shot at the demon once, and he froze. We don't know if anything has changed on that score, because he never gets the chance here.

What I Bought 7/31/2021 - Part 3

It was nice to have a few days where I could sleep with the window open. But that's over for probably another month. Oh well, it hasn't been an awful summer here, outside of a few three-day stretches. And that one week in June when it rained like crazy.

You Promised Me Darkness #4, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Anabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - I will never understand people who gets tattoos, and that includes Alex, who has something like 70, according to him. I hate needles too much for that shit.

Yuko and Sebastian took off on their own to confront the Anti-Everything. If they can find him. It takes some work, and the assistance of Drake Limbo, Weird Detective, but they get on the right track. Of course, by the time they get there, Sage has his merry band there already, and the Anti-Everything has done something to a bunch of people to make them into. . . zombies maybe? Their teeth appear rather pointy, and their eyes are white pinholes, but the faces are otherwise muddled.

That's basically it. All the different sides making final preparations and getting their pieces in place for the big fight. The plus side is, Sage said he lost his power of meta-narration, so no more of his annoying caption boxes. Unless Sage was lying. I don't have any real sense of how this might go. Which could be a good sign, that the book doesn't feel predictable. 

It feels more like I just don't get what Connelly's driving at. The story seems to drift from setting to setting, with the notion of an apocalypse hanging over everything allegedly driving the action, but it doesn't feel like it. Maybe because Sage is so sure of his plan, but there's no sense of urgency to his actions. Sebastian is supposedly important, and presumably Yuko's close ties with him mean she is as well, but nobody acts much like it. The Anti-Everything isn't making a concerted effort to find them.

I don't know, next issue is the conclusion of the first arc at least. Maybe it'll come together then. Plus, I'll see how Connelly gets around his apparent indifference to drawing action scenes if there's going to be a big fight.

Black Jack Demon #1, by Nick Hermes - Ah, the waving handprint on the door. A sure sign of friendly folk. Wait, I'm being informed that's a bloody handprint, which is a sure sign of being in a Silent Hill game. Whoops.

After a massive explosion at their mine, Silas' father is killed and skinned by someone. The sheriff is no help, so Silas hires a lady gunfighter named Humphrey to hunt the killer down. Despite being on foot, the culprit stays ahead of them for days. When they finally get to where they can lie in wait, they get more than they - or at least Humphrey - bargained for. Silas is left alone again, with another skinned body to bury.

Hermes' art, besides making Silas look like a young Man in the Big Yellow Hat, tries evoke the style of the old EC horror comics. The deep shadows around the eyes and the exaggerated expressions. The panel backgrounds that are usually just a solid color, lacking in any details. Unless he's trying to create a sense of setting, in which case it's still sparse, but that's due to the landscape they're traveling in. The lettering on the sound effects is typically big block letters that also seem out of a much older comic.

It certainly creates a kind of mood. People alone, fighting something they don't understand and are ill-equipped to deal with. And it lends weight to the question of why Silas is so hellbent on pursuing this if he's so frightened. Humphrey points out that his family mine will be taken by greedy interests in town since there's no one there to run them off, and Silas basically ignores her. What's so terrifying about that to make him decide chasing a demon is a better alternative? Hermes draws Silas at a distance from other people. Even when they're in the same panel as him, there's a gap. He's in the background or they are. Nobody's looking the same direction as him. His gaze is always on its own thing.