“The Chicken is in the Details”
Creative Staff:
Story: Brain Buccellato
Art: Hayden Sherman
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
The earth- (and glass-) shattering final chapter of volume one! On the heels of his first big victory, Mitchell Moss is thrown a major curveball that has him scrambling to finish what he started so he can move on with his life. But how do you un-break bad after you’ve gone on a kill-cray rampage?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Chicken Devil started big in a weird and crazy way and has largely embraced that throughout with a kind of stupidly lucky bumbling lead who should be dead multiple times over, which made for a lot of fun. Admittedly, with the way gun violence plays out in America today it makes for a lot of story fodder that can tell interesting stories so I’m game for checking them out. But at the same time knowing what’s all around us can certainly make you on edge a bit. Hayden Sherman has wowed me on several titles in the last few years so getting a chance to see more of his kinetic artwork definitely excites me. With this property, it feels like with the story and artwork it’s like Crank meets Falling Down with a chicken mask thrown in for good measure.
The reveal that Mitchell’s family is alive at the end of the last issue definitely set us up for an interesting finale in this issue. Well, finale for now as they’re promising more in the future. Mitchell’s shocked at them being alive but they’re still pretty accusatory and rightly so for how they ended up on the boat. They got off before it exploded in front of them and then found the suitcase of money he gave them, so they ended up hitting a resort until coming back now since the family thought, at least for a minute, that he was trying to kill them. While Mitchell is able to explain things away truthfully without talking about all the killing he’s done, they’re still a level of distrust but also just a very antagonistic family at play here that opts, for now, to just go back to normal until they can deal with more detail and nuance later. Which is fine for Mitchell, if not for the fact he’s seeing Russians everywhere.
With the higher-ups intent on dealing with the chicken man for all that he’s caused, and even Mitchell’s own mother telling him to dial things back as he can’t stop every Russian in the area, Mitchell’s just glad to get everyone out of the house for the day, presumably safe, so he can armor up, weapon up, and go after the locals hard and fast. It makes for a fun and chaotic situation but one where we discover that there are more chickens ready to play as the cops that have been following all of this realize that they can help do a lot more good by doing what he’s doing. Especially since he’s so bad at it. It’s an amusing twist that will likely mean the next miniseries will focus more on this new dynamic and I can see it being interesting, but at the same time, I’m not sure that I want more even while having enjoyed this.
In Summary:
Chicken Devil played like the Michael Douglas movie Falling Down at the start and it was definitely a title where you couldn’t really have expectations for it. It’s internally consistent yet all over the map at times that it’s just hilarious watching it unfold. I really enjoyed a lot of it but there are, I think, diminishing returns on the concept. Buccellato’s script works well and I liked a lot of it even with the family stuff at the end that felt right yet off. Sherman’s artwork is just fantastic and I continue to enjoy the work he’s done with AfterShock so far as it’s just so damn creative. I can’t wait to see more from both creators, whether this series or something else.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: January 26th, 2022
MSRP: $4.99
