PILOT SEASON DEMONIC #1

Review by: FraggleUprising
Writer: Robert Kirkman
Artist: Joe Benitez
Cover: Marc Silvestri

Size: 32 pages
Price: 2.99

This book grabs you quick. The book opens sweetly on a couple settling in for the night after a movie.  The wife is already snoozing through whatever the husband is saying when he smiles and decides to turn in and hit the lights. This is page one.

On pages two and three the demon that possesses this former cop, Scott, urges him to murder his wife and child to satisfy the demon’s blood-lust.  Scott has some difficulty refusing this suggestion because of some agreement between the two or curse or some such thing.  But Scott won’t hurt his family. He needs to satisfy the demon somehow, though, so he takes to the streets to find deserving souls to feed his demon master’s blood lust.  That’s a lot of ground to cover so quickly, but Kirkman and artist Joe Benitez accomplish the feat fairly tidily in only 11 panels.

Thematically, what Demonic reminds of me more than a little is Kirkman’s Haunt.  In that book also an otherwise fairly regular guy becomes possessed by a demon of sorts, and he has to come to grips with a new daily struggle to share his body with this new violently powerful entity. And hijinks ensue. This book may actually have a whole lot more going for it than Haunt as well because, with Scott’s family constantly at risk, and at risk from himself no less, it feels like there are already stakes here.  The demon gives Scott the power to thwart evil and keep his family safe, but the one ever present evil in his life is that same demons hunger for him to sacrifice the pure souls of his family. I’m deeply invested in thsi story already.  It would feel like a genuine shame if this turned out to be the only issue.

Story: 4 - Very Good
Art: 4 - Very Good

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