I Can Sell You a Body #2 // Review
Denny sees dead people. And they can be really, really annoying. The life that allows him the find dead people new homes? It’s not nearly as lucrative as it seemed at first, and now he’s in debt and all kinds of trouble. That trouble gets quite a bit more complicated in I Can Sell You A Body #2. Writer Ryan Ferrier’s story continues its clever, little course in another issue drawn by with sharp, emotionally clever art by George Kambadais. Ferrier may be throwing a bit too many story elements into Denny’s life, but at least it’s not a boring life. Things feel a bit rushed and messy, but that IS the life of a guy like Denny, so it’s a bit hard to fault him for it.
Denny’s eating what appear to be packets of ketchup in a public place when the police approach him about a death. The police are the least of Denny’s worries as money problems mix with professional problems. There’s a demand that Denny finds a body for the one guy in the whole of the afterlife who doesn’t want to come back. What’s worse: he’s a big, dead mob boss. If Denny can’t get him to come back, he’s as good as dead. Naturally, he turns to a woman he helped out the last issue...he’d given her a lot of money because she needed it. Now he needs it back, and she doesn’t have it. That doesn’t mean she isn’t attracted to him, though. He can hardly refuse emotional support of any kind. Things are about to get a lot more complicated for Denny.
Ferrier keeps things moving briskly for Denny. The man who was so confident at the beginning of the last issue has hit rock bottom, and it’s only going to get worse for him. Ferrier never loses sight of the humor in the normal and the paranormal that keeps it all from getting WAY too heavy. Ferrier keeps a wild sense of unpredictability in the plot. Even the most stable elements of Denny’s life could turn out to be totally bonkers when he least expects it. Ferrier keeps things tumbling quite well in a satisfying second issue.
Kambadais has a very delicate balance between horror and comedy fused into the art. The ghosts wander around in a place the feels enjoyable ridiculous while still holding some sense of menace. Denny conjures a group of dead mob victims from a hospital morgue, and it’s funny, but there’s a really disturbing edge to the humor that Kambadais has a firm and solid grasp on. Above it all, Kambadais keeps a steady lock on the series’ main character. Denny looks compellingly pummeled and disheveled as events rush around him.
There’s a sudden revelation at the end of the issue that things are about to get worse for Denny in a way that he couldn’t hope to have anticipated. It’s cute and everything, but it continues to pull the narrative in a wild, weird direction that doesn’t seem like it’s going to allow for enough time with the central premise. Denny and his power seem very, very interesting, and the world of the afterlife in this series would be a lot of fun to explore if only Ferrier would relax and spend a little bit more time with it in the foreground of the story.
