HELLRAISER: RESURRECTIONS – THE RETURN OF THE PRIEST #1 REVIEW: PINHEAD FINDS SOMETHING WORSE THAN PAIN

WEPAAAA! Now THIS is the kind of Hellraiser joint I wanna read, fam. Don’t give me Pinhead popping up like some horror mascot because somebody touched the damn box again. Nah. Hellraiser: Resurrections – The Return of the Priest #1 throws the Hell Priest into something way nastier than chains and hooks. Nothing. No pain. No pleasure. No sensation. No little twitch to remind you that you’re even still in your own skin. Sarah Gailey comes in understanding exactly who this dude is. Pinhead ain’t scared of pain. Pain is his church. So stick him in a place where he can’t feel shit? Coño, now you got his attention.

Elliot Spencer wakes up in Middle Hell basically stripped down to awareness and misery. He can see what’s around him, he can remember pieces of himself, but everything that used to define him is gone. No sensation. No release. No punishment. Just existing. And for this cat? That might be worse than getting torn apart. That’s where the story gets nasty in the right way because Pinhead has always been one of those villains who believes every damn word coming out of his mouth. He ain’t performing. He really thinks pain opens doors. So watching him wander through this dead-ass place where nobody can even feel their own suffering is like watching a priest get locked out of his own cathedral.

Gailey doesn’t rush getting him back either, and I appreciated that because the resurrection feels earned instead of some cheap “boom, Pinhead is back” reveal. Elliot starts remembering himself piece by piece, and you can feel the hunger coming with it. Not hunger like “I need lunch,” fam. I’m talking that deep, twisted need to FEEL something again. The pins, the leather, Leviathan, the whole Priest identity, all of that starts creeping back into the story while Elliot is figuring out exactly what kind of monster he wants to be this time around. Then Leviathan’s light starts cutting through the emptiness and suddenly all that numbness starts cracking. Now we’re talking.

Alessio Avallone’s artwork gets real foul with the atmosphere before the gore even kicks in. Middle Hell looks drained, cold, almost sickly. Pale greens, gray flesh, fog everywhere, bodies floating around like everybody got dumped into some supernatural holding cell nobody bothered to finish building. It’s creepy because it feels dead, not because the book is screaming at you to be scared. Then Sara Cuomo starts bringing the color back as sensation returns and the whole visual temperature changes. Reds get meaner. Blacks get heavier. Leviathan’s light cuts through the page like somebody opened a door you were never supposed to see. You can damn near feel the book waking up with him.

Then Avallone starts getting disrespectful with the body horror, and yo, this is Hellraiser, so THAT’S what I came for. Flesh is not sacred here. Bodies are basically raw material. Transformation looks painful, ugly and almost religious, which fits Pinhead perfectly because this dude sees mutilation like somebody else sees baptism. That’s the sauce right there. The violence is nasty, but it ain’t just there to make you go “ewww.” It tells you who he is. Alberto Canale keeps the visuals flowing clean with Avallone, and Ed Dukeshire has a whole lotta whispering, screaming, narration and Cenobite weirdness to keep in order. The lettering never gets in the way even when the page is getting busy as hell.

Now, I ain’t gonna front, this issue is absolutely setup. Heavy setup. Gailey spends most of the book rebuilding the Priest, reestablishing his whole vibe and putting pieces in place for what comes next. So if you came in looking for a complete horror story where everything gets wrapped by the last page, nah, you ain’t getting that. The back half starts pulling the Gash back together and by the time everybody is standing there looking like the worst group project in Hell, I’m like, “YO, don’t stop NOW!” I wanted a few more pages of chaos before they hit me with the end. But I’d rather be mad because I wanted more than bored because they dragged it out.

This is why Pinhead still works when creators remember he ain’t just some dude with nails in his head chasing fools around. He’s got belief behind the madness. Pain is sacred to him. Sensation is truth. Suffering is revelation. Gailey leans straight into that twisted philosophy and Avallone makes the return feel less like putting the costume back on and more like watching some dark-ass ceremony. This ain’t nostalgia karaoke, fam. This is Pinhead getting stripped down, starved, rebuilt and sent back into the world meaner because now he knows what life feels like without pain.

WEPAAAA! The Priest is back, and Hell just handed the keys to the wrong damn cabrón.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4.5/5

Written By: Sarah Gailey
Illustrated By: Alessio Avallone
Art Assistance: Alberto Canale
Colors: Sara Cuomo
Letters: Ed Dukeshire
Designer: Grace Park
Editor: Ari Yarwood
Editor-in-Chief: Andy Schmidt
Main Cover: Zach Howard with colors by Nelson Dániel
Variant Covers: Federico Sabbatini, Christian Ward, Ariel Olivetti
Publisher: BOOM! Studios