More of the disturbing past.
Creative Staff:
Story: Garth Ennis
Art: Goran Sudzuka
Colors: Ive Svorcina
Letterer: Rob Steen
What They Say:
Shaw has a story to tell, but McGregor isn’t too sure if he wants to hear it. With the utter depravity of Carnahan’s crimes revealed, the two agents begin to understand the nature of their predicament—and things turn out to be worse than they could ever have guessed.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The further into A Walk Through Hell I get the more confused I am by things, again pointing me towards a series that may work better when read in full than monthly. Garth Ennis isn’t always the clearest of writers in some ways and a convoluted approach to storytelling isn’t bad as there are many that I enjoy. This one just seems like it’s not coming together in a way that clicks for me. Where it does work is in the solid artwork from Goran Sudzuka as character designs continue to be engaging and I love the way he presents interiors for the office and what we get toward the end with the home that the investigators have to visit. With the colors by Svorcina, everything has such a sense of decay and horror about it.
This issue continues to mostly bookend what it’s doing here where we get Shaw and McGregor inside the warehouse with all the shadows and uncertainty about them. She’s starting to reveal more about the investigation from before that we’d seen in the past and how she thinks what’s going on here is tied to it, which is what keeps you reading so intently in order to understand how all of this is happening. Unfortunately, we don’t quite get to that at this point but instead spend a lot of time going through that past investigation and certain weird events that happened along the way. The most notable was Shaw getting into a fight with Addison in the halls of the FBI and her slugging him, which essentially turned him gallant somehow that makes no sense.
The bulk of the book focuses on the investigation into Carnahan and how things continually get worse for the investigators as time is running out on pressing charges. Shaw’s convinced its him based on all the evidence but he hasn’t buckled once, making it all the more problematic because they need that in order to get the chargers pushed through. But his polite nature and denials stymies them and without hard evidence they’re out of luck. Seeing the ways they try to push and push to get it, and his lawyer pushing back, makes for some good tension. But the way it unfolds with someone else taking the fall, with some disturbing visuals to be sure, and the idea that Carnahan gets away with it all is something that should leave most unsettled.
In Summary:
There continue to be interesting moments in A Walk Through Hell and some really disturbing things, such as what’s under the little kid’s coat from the cover, but it’s not holding up well as a full on narrative. As a police procedural there’s a lot of interesting things in the flashback side that’s being explored and I’m enjoying pieces of that, coming from my enjoyment of shows like Mindhunter and a lot of UK murder mystery dramas. But the tension has been let out of this bag for a bit now and it’s needing to do something significant in order to really engage me.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: August 29th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
