HELLRAISER: RESURRECTIONS – THE DEEP GOSPEL #1 REVIEW

WEPAAAA! Hellraiser: Resurrections – The Deep Gospel #1 understands the assignment before the first chain even gets comfortable. Tini Howard is not trying to do a greatest-hits remix where Cenobites stroll out, quote the mythology and wait for applause. This is about identity, appetite and transformation, which is exactly where Hellraiser gets dangerous when creators stop treating the franchise like a Halloween costume rack.

Howard centers the Female Cenobite and gives the issue a surprisingly intimate engine. The horror is still wet, sharp and deeply unpleasant, don’t worry, nobody sanitized Hell. But the violence grows out of a character looking for shape, purpose and companionship inside a system literally built around desire becoming punishment. That gives the body horror a reason to exist beyond “look how gross this is.” The best Hellraiser stories always understand that the hook goes into an idea before it goes into flesh.

Jenna Cha’s art is beautiful in the most disrespectful possible way. Flesh stretches, bodies open, creatures crawl and the page still has elegance. Her line has enough delicacy to make the grotesque material worse because you can actually see the anatomy and expression instead of hiding everything under black ink and gore effects. She also knows when not to crowd a panel. Some of the most unsettling beats are the clean ones, where a figure has room around it and your eye has nowhere else to escape.

Brad Simpson colors the issue with cold surgical blues, raw reds and sickly organic tones that make Hell feel less like a fiery cave and more like a living system. That matters. The palette separates different kinds of pain and different spaces without turning the book into a neon haunted house. Ed Dukeshire’s lettering stays controlled even when the page is full of screaming, narration and sound effects, which lets Cha’s compositions breathe.

This issue is part of a larger Resurrections concept, but it works as its own statement. There are names, rules and lore in the background, yet Howard does not make you sit through a franchise PowerPoint. The only small knock is that the ending feels like a door opening rather than a door slamming. I wanted another few pages with the new status quo before the issue handed me off to what comes next.

Still, this is exactly the kind of licensed horror comic I want: respectful without becoming timid, nasty without becoming empty, and visually confident enough to create new imagery instead of tracing old movie stills. The Deep Gospel #1 does not simply resurrect Hellraiser. It remembers why the damn thing hurt in the first place.

Cha’s handling of the Cenobites is especially strong because she never reduces them to masks and leather. Their bodies are architecture. Hooks, wounds, folds and impossible modifications tell you how they understand themselves before the dialogue does. That is pure Hellraiser visual language, but it still feels like Cha’s drawing rather than an imitation of production stills from the films. Licensed horror desperately needs more of that confidence.

Howard also leaves enough ambiguity around desire that the story does not become a simple empowerment metaphor dressed in gore. Transformation in this world is never free. Every gain has a cost, every new shape raises another question, and companionship itself can become another form of appetite. That complication keeps the issue dangerous. It would have been easy to make the Female Cenobite’s new direction emotionally tidy. The book is smarter for refusing to do that.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4.5/5

Writer: Tini Howard
Illustrator: Jenna Cha
Colorist: Brad Simpson
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Editor: Ari Yarwood
Cover: Rebeca Puebla
Publisher: BOOM! Studios