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.