By: El Torres (writer), Juan Jose Ryp (art), Francis Gamboa (color), Malaka Studios (letters)
The Story: Nancy is a trashy/sexy scream-queen who is trapped in Hell.
What’s Good: A lot if you don’t take things too seriously. If you’re a red-blooded male of our species, there are a lot of worse things than a sexy, scantily clad blond using a chainsaw to chop up the minions of hell. Nancy is also a strong, take-matters-into-her-own-hands character, so all is not lost on our female readers (I’ll come back to this below).
I’m always incredibly quick to hate on Marvel/DC when they put overt sexiness in their comics and sometimes that might come across as prudish, but it is really that I want that sort of comic material contained to a comic like Nancy in Hell. You can look at the cover for this and know what you’re going to get versus reading Thor and being surprised that the she-devils are planning to have an orgy with Mephisto (and then not being able to pass that comic onto a 8 year old boy). There is a time and place for all sorts of comics and Nancy in Hell is very appropriate for what it is.
Unlike many comics that have sexy women as their primary calling card, Nancy in Hell actually has a decent story to go with it. The story is basically that there is no division between heaven and hell…it’s all hell, but by being strong, your spirit can retain some of its sense of self in the hellish wastelands but it must continually fight off zombies, hellhounds and the like or suffer true death. But, just as I was thinking there is nothing but random, mind-less enemies to fight, a true villain and an unlikely ally show up that make me interested for the second issue.
What’s Not So Good: To start with, this is a comic that you couldn’t read in a public place. People will think you’re a pervert of some sort if you’re caught reading this on the train or an airplane. It is what it is… And why do strong female characters always come with little clothing? As I think I’ve noted above, I enjoy comics like this, but I’m also objective enough to realize that this sort of comic is perpetuating some stereotypes about comic fans.
Also, for as much as I like the art style that Ryp has with the ladies and monsters in this comic, when he finally draws a man on the final pages, the dude looks seriously weird. He’s almost androgynous. Maybe that’s intentional and it’ll come into the story later, but for now it looks weird.
Conclusion: This won’t win the Eisner award for best single issue, but if you enjoy seeing a trashy/sexy biker lady kill demons with a chainsaw, you should check it our for the art alone.
Grade: B-
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion