By: El Torres (writer), Antonio Vasquez (art), Francis Gamboa (colors) & Malaka Studios (letters)
The Story: Nancy and Lucifer continue their attempt to escape hell.
What’s Good: It is hard to find a lot to gush about in this comic. There are still a few fun scenes in this issue, such as when Nancy uses her chainsaw to cut a mega-demoness from crotch-to-collarbone and then soccer kicks her head clean off. But, honestly, most of the fun has been lost.
What’s Not So Good: Bait-and-switch alert. Issue #1 of this series was a whole lot of fun as we had the sexy Nancy, stuck in hell, being hit on by dudes in the bar, guzzling whiskey and using her chainsaw on any demons who came too close. Then El Torres tossed a neat twist on the hell story that when one’s soul goes to hell, it is gradually consumed by the legions of hell until you become a beat down and brain-dead zombie of hell yourself. But, issue #1 was mostly style and not so much substance. And that was good because it is only a 4-issue series.
Since then the story has veered into more of a story about Lucifer and playing up his Biblical roots as a fallen angel. Is he good, does he control his own fate, can he escape hell…does he even want to escape hell? That story is all well and good, but it is a far cry from a sexy blonde chainsawing hellhounds with blood slinging everywhere. So, the story has gone from “simple and fun” to slightly ponderous.
There is also an unfortunate art change in this book. Juan Jose Ryp was just AWESOME on issues #1 and #2, but he had other obligations and couldn’t do the last two issues. His other obligations were paying work with Marvel, so it is impossible to fault the guy, but the book does suffer from his absence. Vasquez’s style is hard to judge. Sometimes it is very different than Ryp’s and coming in the middle of a series it is almost hard to judge it on its own merits because he had to follow such a powerful artist (Ryp). But then there are other panels where the art looks A LOT like what Ryp would do. It is almost enough to make one wonder if Ryp had time to do some basic layouts before being leaving the title? Vasquez is in no way “bad”, but if Ryp is a 10…Vasquez is an 8.
Conclusion: A sad example of how a very cool #1 issue can change too much away from what it originally promised.
Grade: D+
– Dean Stell