Lucky Devils #9 // Review
There’s an issue in Hell. Evil Distillation Plant #9 has problems. The pip is all gummed-up. Normally this sort of thing might be caused by a clog in the lines coming from Earth. This is something else altogether. This is something wors. It’s a big slug of pure, uncut good thats coming through the line from Earth to Hell and...it’s not good for Hell at all. Things continue to get complicated for the underworls in Lucky Devils #9. Writer Charles Soule and artist Ryan Browne continue a fun, little horror comedy series that has more than a few moments of cleverness.
Hell is in Crisis. One of the higher-ups is in the Aerie of the Nine-Zeds. He’s adressing an assembly of some pretty prominent demons. The low-level devils are destroying everything. They’ve turned traitor and are helping the humans do good. So naturally, some of the more influential forces in Hell are going to have to start getting really, really active. Things are going to look a lot more hellish on Earth if they have it their way. And there's really no question that they can do it. The.Eight-Zeds vet have been assembled or run some of the most powerful people on Earth.
Overall, Soule it is working with a really fun premise. The world that he's created for this particular horror comedy is a lot of fun to hang out out in for something like 30 pages per issue. The ensemble in question is a little bit crowded, though. It would be a lot more fun to focus on just a couple of characters in the mix of things. As it is, that's not really happening here. There's too much jumping around to different characters in what is a larger ensemble that is absolutely necessary to bring across the story.
Browne has a solid grasp of the ceilings of the story. The fusion between traditional concepts of demonic or and contemporary Metropolitan life fuse together in a way that's pretty fun on the page. It can feel a little bit cluttered. It can feel a little bit overpowering. But more than anything is just a lot of fun. It's really cool seeing how all of this fits together on the page. The intensity of individual moments, it kind of gets lost in the asthma of all the weirdness, though. The art artist is dynamic as it could be given all of the weird stuff that has to be crammed onto the page.
As cluttered as everything seems, there is definitely momentum to this story. And the momentum is carrying each issue through quite well. The ninth issue in a series continues a very appealing run. It would just be a little bit better if it weren't so fucked down in so many ideas that are all struggling to make it to the page. It's a really fun premise, though. And given the right focus in the right editing it could be really brilliant.
