“The Chickens Made Me Do It”
Creative Staff:
Story: Brain Buccellato
Art: Mattia Monaco
Letterer: Buddy Beaudoin
What They Say:
Things reach a breaking point for Mitchell as an ultimatum forces him to choose between his family and revenge spree-killing in a slightly-burnt chicken-in-a-devil-suit. But will his fellow Chicken Devils let him walk away after ONE LAST job?
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 one more installment to go, this issue does a lot of work in setting up the finale where things are going to have to be resolved and go badly at the same time. That means there’s a lot of dialogue going on in this one and moving things into place for the finale, and a lot of drama as well. With Mitchell now struggling with a daughter that wants him to kill her cheating now-ex boyfriend, ti creates a rift there since he refuses and she’s so over the top in her demands that even her mother slaps her across the face to get her to reconnect with reality. But it’s not something that happens easily and it ties back into the problems they all have that stem from the lies. Their son is the one who kind of gets it overall and even tries to help his sister understand, which turn into an amusing bit between the two.
For Mitchell, the bulk of the issue focuses on him going to the detectives and trying to nervously get himself out of all of this as he’s just plain done with it. It’s not something that they’re eager to do, to say the least, but we get him setting up things for one final mission that will take down the Irate Bastards. He has to get a little help from his mother, which is an amusing and frustrating sidebar for the main story here, and the mission itself goes all over the map when the mission goes down since the White Knights show up at the same time to take down the Bastards. It’s a good bit of chaotic mess but you know it’s not something that Mitchell can just get out of or anything, especially considering what a dick at least one of the detectives is. Mitchell’s not naive but he’s just begging and pleading like he knows to get his way and it’s simply not working.
In Summary:
Chicken Devils is inching closer to that finale and it’s taking a long time to get there. The first issue came out back in October and it’s been a long slog for the five issues – with one more issue still to come from that five. This one does the heavy liting to setup for it but that means it gets bogged down in some of the dialogue and putting everyone in the right place for what’s to come. It’s not bad and we do get a fun action sequence to it, but the character-driven aspect of it slows down events overall when you just want to get to the fireworks factory. It continues to read well and look great so it’s a fun experience, one that I again believe will work better when read in full.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: June 21st, 2023
MSRP: $4.99
