Ah, brotherly love.
Creative Staff:
Story: Andrew Constant
Art: Brad Walker, Andrew Hennessy
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
What They Say:
After the horrific acts of last issue, the highly unstable team of Etrigan, Jason Blood and Xanadu must face a new threat. A new player that has been ally, enemy and family to Jason and Etrigan reveals itself, and explains just who is responsible for the nightmarish transformation facing Earth. But before the shock of this information can be absorbed, the group must face a different family member. And he’s got an offer that Etrigan can’t refuse. Alliances will be made, familial bonds will be broken, and blood will be spilled!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The halfway mark of a limited series like this is always one of the hardest issues as it generally feels like it loses some of its steam, particularly if it’s delving into the actual reasons why things are happening. The Demon: Hell is Earth doesn’t exactly gives an information dump with this issue but it’s straddling the line a little bit. Andrew Constant manages the needs of the story well as there’s a lot to cover and some things to introduce to new readers that are getting their first Demon experience but it can still slow things down. Balancing that out is just getting the time to pore over such great artwork from Brad Walker and Andrew Hennessy that Chris Sotomayor elevates so well with the color work. It’s a critical piece to this in a way that it isn’t always for some other books and the end result is definitely strong.
The events that have gone on are touched upon at the start here outside of the ominous black sphere of doom as we see just how bad things are getting in Death Valley and the horror/chaos mix of it is just brutal, especially when the attack essentially “feeds the beast” as one of them says. That sets up the tension of what’s going on outside nicely so that the focus inside with all that we learn can take center stage. The arrival of Merlin is definitely amusing, especially since we get a bit more of a nod toward the Demon Knights days, but more so just for the dynamic that exists between these two “Brothers” and how they interact with each other. Merlin’s got his own issues, and spending a lot of time captured in hell hasn’t helped, and there’s a real and earned anger that exists between them, a lot of it justified. Including the whole rhyming thing that gets on everyone’s nerves.
The book does give us some fun with how Jason deals with all of this with his simple grinning about it, but a lot of it just focuses on the fact that Belial is going to be coming for Merlin because of what he needs from him on top of the whole nuclear element that he needed to set things in motion for taking over everything. It’s a kind of classic power play in hell storyline in this regard that’s going on and it has a very fun twist toward the end that shakes things up for the moment (but, like hell works, can be tweaked easily by someone else later on). Merlin’s backstory about how he came about here and took over the girl’s body is covered well and that sets Etrigan off even more, but it and almost everything we get with Merlin is place setting for what’s to come. It’s fun to be sure, especially as the others finally start to get involved in understanding the stakes, but it’s a fairly standard mid-series installment.
In Summary:
With a lot of background material brought into focus with Merlin, The Demon gives us a bit more of the foundation we need to move forward with. Merlin takes center stage here and reminds me why I generally don’t care for him and it’s unfortunate as it pushes others like Jason into the background. Even Etrigan is more supporting for the first half of the book. Once it gets moving and some action comes into focus it picks up a bit more, especially since it’s just so beautifully illustrated, as the impact and power of it all works well with more of hell’s machinations and regions explored visually. It’s a solid installment and one that I think will work better when read as a single series than a single installment, but it does what it needs to and sets us up for what’s to come.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: January 24th, 2018
MSRP: $2.99
