Drums #1 – Review

By: El Torres (writer), Abe Hernando & Kwaichang Kraneo (art) & Edward Sellner (editor)

The Story: Caribbean and Latin American religious powers are at play in a supernatural murder mystery taking place in Louisiana.

What’s Good: You’ll probably really enjoy this story if you’re into learning about Caribbean and Latin American religions as they play very heavily into this story that centers around an FBI agents who is investigating a warehouse full of dead people who were involved in a kinda pan-religious rite in Louisiana.  Of course, the FBI suspects that this is a Jonestown-style mass suicide, but as the story progresses and the agent gathers more information and has a few supernatural experiences himself, it becomes clear that something else is going on.

The comic has all the standard tropes of voodoo stories: reanimated corpses, beheaded chickens, wise old black ladies, reading of fortunes, etc.  If you’re into those kinds of stories where a person from the secular world (like this FBI agent) stumbles into an alien and supernatural world, you’ll probably dig this story a lot.

The artists do a nice job of selling the creepy atmosphere of this story and show a really nice understanding of lighting.  Everything is colored in a kinda Hellboy-palate: blacks, browns, burnt oranges, reddish-browns.  No blue.  No green.  It works.

Nancy in Hell #3 – Review

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.

Nancy In Hell #1 – Review

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.