“10 Things I Hate About Cults”
Creative Staff:
Story: Rich Douek
Art: Carlos Olivares
Colors: Manuel Puppo
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Elizabeth has gone missing, and the gang will stop at nothing to find her – even if it means facing down the swim team on their own. But, as they uncover the sinister motives driving the cult’s activities, they learn that they, and the entire town, are in deeper danger than they ever imagined.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While the series started in an interesting way as Rich Douek was giving us a bit of a teen horror series where things aren’t all dark and grim, at least visually, it has definitely grown beyond that while still keeping that at its core. Douek packed a lot into the run so far but has been smart enough to ensure that there are spaces to breathe for the characters instead of just constantly moving from scene to scene. Carlos Olivares is handling the artwork for this with Manuel Puppo doing the color design and it has a really good “fun” look about it with the characters and the bright colors. It’s leaning into that vibrant Cali lifestyle and all the rich blues and greens will definitely help it. It’s definitely a welcome change from the much darker-looking books that we’ve seen the last few years from lots of publishers in this genre.
With events picking up pretty quickly as the next issue is the conclusion, this installment provides a bit more context and gets into some chaotic action and some grim moments – but also some real beauty. The gang is doing their best to find Elizabeth as she’s essentially missing and that has them orchestrating a way with Danica as a distraction to get into Deegan’s place to check his records. This leads to several discoveries, such as Deegan supposedly taking her to the same place as Elgin’s brother who disappeared/died, and that she’s going to be gone for a week. And his place not only has articles about the power plant in town but full-on specs for it. And while it’s revealed toward the end, the discovery of the true nature of the facility and what’s going on is certainly on the horrifying level.
What we do get is Elizabeth in a secret grotto all tied up with Deegan in his robes explaining the whole creature deal from a simplistic place, as it should be. Trent’s all wired and beholden and Deegan is offering a chance to be a queen of the new world because, of course, standard views of how bad things are without any real understanding. It’s not bad and I agree that it’s accurate, but it just makes it clear that Deegan is no deep thinker. But what it shifts to is the gang, having managed to find out the place from another member of the swim team, storm it and do their best to rescue Elizabeth before making clear the bigger plan. It’s filled with great action sequences that deliver a really good time, even as it goes quite dark, because it also gives Danica and Elizabeth a moment to really show their bond amid all the chaos and sense of just how close to dying Elizabeth was.
In Summary:
This series opened strong for me and has held onto it while expanding in the right ways for what is a five-issue run. It has a limited amount of time and some things may feel a bit forced because of it but that’s where we’re supposed to use our imaginations to fill in the blanks because it can’t cover every minute. The foundations to this run were set well and that means some solid payoff here as we get more discoveries, more overt moments from the bad guys, and some action with dark real-world consequences to come from it. It’s sharply written with great dialogue and I can’t gush about the artwork enough as it has a lot of style and is well-elevated by Manuel Puppo’s color design. I’m excited to see the conclusion while hoping there’s a way for another series.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: July 20th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
