I Can Sell You a Body #3 // Review
Denny Little is having financial difficulty. There’s a lovely woman he has found himself in something of a romantic encounter with. She wants to help him out of his financial trouble. The problem isn’t that she robbed a bank to help him out. Denny’s got more complicated problems than that which become apparent in I Can Sell You a Body #3. Writer Ryan Ferrier carves his way through a distinctly clever bit of horror with artist George Kambadais. The complexity of life for Denny is amplified as a demon arrives in a hotel, Denny discovers the power of feeling genuinely good, and a Vatican priest arrives in the U.S.
One never knows quite what to expect in the early stages of a relationship. When the woman Denny Little returns to a hotel room with a duffle bag full of cash from a recent bank-robbing expedition, he is suitably horrified. When the walls of that hotel room begin dripping blood, that horror takes a back seat to the horror of a demon looking to make things even more complicated for Denny. Thanks to the fresh perspective of a new relationship, Denny just might find a new way to deal with demons.
A life tumbling into chaos can be great fun to write. It’s very difficult to write well...particularly in a comedy featuring a main character haunted by ghosts and demons and things. Ferrier manages a very meticulous balance on the chaos of Denny’s life. The craziness of owing money to the mob while dating a woman who would think nothing of casually robbing a bank is balanced in the paranormal realm by the sudden appearance of an evil demon and the constant presence of the spirits of the dead. Throw in a little bit of character development that casts some light on the darkness within Denny, and Ferrier clearly has managed a very textured paranormal crime romantic comedy-drama thing. It’s a deceptively casual genre mash-up, but it would be a hopeless mess if Ferrier didn’t do such a good job of directing the flow of narrative and thematic traffic.
Kambadais’ art binds a perfect middle ground between spectral horror and silly rubbery comedy that also somehow manages a degree of seriousness that casts some genuinely intriguing light on the psyche of a man who is cast into the maelstrom of life out of control. The supernatural fits pretty seamlessly into a smartly-rendered contemporary world without compromising the dark fantasy of the demons and spectral possession and such. There’s a delicate horror to Kambadais’ work the embraces the tender emotional humor of the story.
Ferrier drops romance into an already crowded thematic space for Denny Little. It wouldn’t work without a very disciplined approach to maintaining the narrative momentum that’s been unwaveringly maintained throughout the first couple of issues of the series. Ferrier and Kambadais keep a wild and tender dramatic horror action comedy scurrying across the pages of the third issue of the series.
