REVIEW: Damn Them All #7

Dark dark magic. This book is about that and more. I quite liked this issue of Damn them all. This being my first foray into the series puts me at a bit of a lost stage since I don’t really know who the characters are right now, but I am glad to say that I love the dog. The dog is an omniscient being who helps Ellie the witch put the world back in order after her uncle messed it all up and released hell upon earth.

The story is mostly told in narration boxes from a third perspective that speaks almost in a poem-like manner. I find this quite a fantastic way to tell magickal stories because many of the spells we see in witch grimoires always have a bit of poetry to them, so it all goes very well with the aesthetic of the book. The art itself is good, it can get a bit distorted at times with some pages looking a little too trippy for my liking, but in a world where spirituality and LSD are so intermixed it makes sense to be this trippy with this sort of story. At times the writing seems to be Hellboy-ish as the main character is a rude, maybe australian, paranormal-friendly person that despite this being a topic of incredible controversy and potential horror treats it like just a normal day on the job.

Intertwined between the story are what seem to be journal entries of Ellie’s uncle on different topics of paranormal interest. These pages are written in almost an academic note with a slight bit of cynicism and perhaps annoyance at the magickal world. Think Constantine meets a university professor. They also feature a black-and-white diagram of the topic discussed in the entry. These entries seem to give us a deeper insight into the writer Simon Spurrier as they contain quite deep metaphors and knowledge about spiritism and magical rituals and perhaps this is a person that has health with magickal topics in the past, perhaps even a modern-day wizard themselves. My favorite entry is the one about the angels which uses a beautifully crafted metaphor to explain the relationship between God, Humans and Angels. I had to read it twice because it was so well written that I forgot to look for the underlying metaphorical link to the angels and then it all clicked in an eureka moment that I greatly enjoyed and appreciated.

The lettering is nice, but where it really shines is in the dialogue with the dog. It is written in a scraggly sharp font inside a word balloon that feels sort of ghost-like and that works really well for a being that is omniscient and not necessarily of this world but is inhabiting the body of a dog. I really like that too, a dog that is all-knowing reminds me of the John dies at the end stories and perhaps there is some deeper spiritual connection between dogs and gods that I’m overlooking (other than how “dog” and “god” are the same spelled backward).

I’m not 100% sold on the art style, as I think the character designs could be a little better and more original, and the backgrounds are sometimes too detailed to make enough of a contrast with the characters. At times it feels like everything in the panel is screaming at you to get your attention, which only gets louder when you go into those trippy scenes, but the overall coloring is pretty cool. It’s mostly composed of a muted color palette with heavy browns, greys, reds, oranges, and some blues here and there. Which serves very well with the genre of the stories being told. The one page that really got my attention features 4 “enlightened” (maybe) beings floating through a laboratory and killing several scientists with their holiness. The reason it stood out so much is because of the way it’s composed you get a superb look at a guy spitting blood and another one whose head is blowing up, but the coolest bit in this illustration is the way it’s colored with the trippy 3d like effect it almost seems like the characters have wings and have several eyes floating around them, which is very reminiscent of the original description of angels in the bible. Which described them as having several pairs of wings and eyes, so that is actually a pretty good use of metaphorical illustration.

If you like Supernatural, Hellboy, or Constantine this book is probably for you. It is fun to read although a bit violent at times, easy to read, and contains some pretty realistic information about magickal topics that make it feel like a book that was either really well researched or the author has a first-hand experience with the world of modern-day magick and ritualism. It’s a bit heavy on the eyes so be warned but it’s not bad art, it’s just overwhelming in some parts. Prepare however to fall in love with the godly dog, you have been advised.

Writing: 5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Colors: 5 Stars

Overall: 4.5 Stars

Written by: Simon Spurrier
Illustrated by: Charlie Adlard
Coloring by: Sofie Dodgson & Daniel Silva De Carvalho
Lettering by: Jim Campbell
Cover art by: Charlie Adlard
Variant Covers by: Charlie Adlard, Mike Deodato Jr, Jão Canola, Yanick Paquette & Matheus Lopes

Published by Boom! Studios

Reviewed by Antonio “Mabs”