Closing in on a truth.
Creative Staff:
Story: Garth Ennis
Art: Goran Sudzuka
Colors: Ive Svorcina
Letterer: Rob Steen
What They Say:
Shaw finally comes clean, and now McGregor knows what’s gotten them trapped in a world of constant nightmare. But with understanding comes determination, and the pair begin their attempt to climb back towards the light. The missing agent Goss, meanwhile, discovers a particular horror all his own—and suffers what may the worst fate of all.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
A Walk Through Hell reaches the end of its first arc with this installment and that gives us a couple of months before it returns in December with a new arc. It’s not exactly what feels like the end of an arc but perhaps the end of a chapter, but Garth Ennis doesn’t always go for clear-cut demarcations to begin with. This issue again works the past and present similar to what we did before in the series with a few somewhat expected reveals but it’s hard to get engaged about it with the “gimmick” still largely an unknown. Goran Sudzuka does a good job in capturing the look of everything with the expressions and oppression while Ive Svorcina does a great job with the color design to reinforce it.
It’s still not largely difficult to keep track of things but I’m at a point where the stories vary in just how much they connect. Half of this issue is focused on Goss and his wandering around inside the warehouse, or whatever it really is, and what his fears are. This goes back to his childhood with a fear of monsters that later manifested in being afraid of certain spaces, like alone in the woods or a dark basement. He has that fundamental understanding that such things are not real but the perception and feeling when in such spaces heighten an unease into fear. With him walking through dark corridors here, gun raised, he knows something must be here. That slow build panic is nicely done and the payoff is the bizarre creatures that we get, but even that feels like it doesn’t quite hit the right level it needs to resonate.
The other side of the book focuses on Shaw and McGregor as they try to figure out what’s going on as he wants to believe that this has some basis in reality even with what they’ve seen. For Shaw, she’s pretty much convinced that this must really be hell but there’s humor in it because the fact that she’d end up here after doing what she considered good by killing the child molester is just more than she can handle. This gives us a flashback sequence to see how things went down at the end of the guys’ life when she and her partner confronted him and demanded a confession. There’s a mess to it that even with how they get away with it makes it all awkward and left you feeling like things just went south in a really bad way. That she attempts to course correct here, largely for McGregor’s sake, isn’t a surprise because it feels like who she is, it’s a problem in that we really don’t know what all of this means even still.
In Summary:
A Walk Through Hell is still something of a trudge through a storyline at the moment. I can imagine this working a bit better as a serialized Netflix kind of show more than the comic that it is because it would connect in a more compelling way. Which means that there are things here that I like because I can visualize it in that way. But in this form it suffers from feeling like it’s going on too long without giving us anything to really connect with the why department, though the character side is decent with what we get. I like the ideas and artwork for it but the execution just isn’t holding me here.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: October 3rd, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
