“The Chicken You Know…”
Creative Staff:
Story: Brain Buccellato
Art: Mattia Monaco
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
Feeling pressure from all sides, The Chicken Devil must choose between planning an exit strategy from his secret life as a kill-crazy vigilante or losing his family forever. Unfortunately for Mitch, the personal agendas of his partners-in-crime and actual family make this a real freaking Sophie’s Choice…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The original four-issue Chicken Devil series was something that was a weird and crazy property that largely embraced throughout 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. Mattia Monaco was a strong addition to the series as he took on the art duties for this run and it definitely works well in delivering a similar but different experience. With this property, it feels like with the story and artwork it’s again like Crank meets Falling Down with a chicken mask thrown in for good measure.
With a few months between issues again, I’ve lost a lot of the connection to this property though the general idea is still working well. The details are what’s lost when you got three months between books. This one picks up with Mitch having shot his daughter’s boyfriend as he was climbing into her window as he figured it was something else going on. And considering what his life is like, well, that’s understandable. Things are chaotic as he works to keep him alive and then wit the two dirty cops work to get him to the hospital. And that just leads to a conflict with the kid’s parents, as expected, and a general sense of heightened tension and anger that has Mitch’s wife to be the one to use a folding chair to smack people around and get them to act like adults. Suffice it to say, it’s chaotic.
The book has a lot going on with various character iterations, such as the cops having their boss trying to get them to figure out what’s going on as there’s a lot of gang activity, but for them it’s just more opportunity. They’ve spent time with Mitch to highlight the opportunities available with so many key figures in the city now and they want him along for more wetwork. And Mitch does just that because of many reasons and we see him taking things into his own hands as well as toward the end a few tough types show up at the restaurant he has to deal with personally. That’s all making this really difficult for his wife as she wants him to make a choice of which life he wants but it comes at a darker point for him beyond that with his daughter, knowing who he really is now, wants him to kill her boyfriend for good after she found out he’s cheating on her. Mitch is at the whims of everyone and it keeps feeling like it’s going to be something that will really break him sooner or later.
In Summary:
Chicken Devils keeps the story moving forward and there are some fun moments here, such as the parents dealing with each other after the shooting or just seeing how deflated Mitch in trying to keep up with all the demands on him. It’s a bad spot that he’s in and there are so many things in the air in his life that nothing is going to go well for him. It’s hard to see how he comes out of this alive at all and even just leaving L.A. isn’t going to help him if he tried that. It’s a pretty strong book with good dialogue, pacing, and artwork to help bind it all together but the delays mean it’ll work a lot better as a trade than the other way.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: April 19th, 2023
MSRP: $4.99
