Champions of Hell #1
Ira Hunter and Robin Thompson
Reviewed by Darren Hick

There are a number of ways this work immediately failed to endear itself to me:

1. Publishing under the moniker of "Hunter Thompson Unlimited" -- I don't care if the creators' names are Hunter and Thompson -- this is just wrong;

2. Swiping from Todd McFarlane's Spawn of all things, right there on the front cover, in front of God and everybody;

and

3. Beginning the book on the inside-front-cover with a lengthy quote from Motley Crüe's "Shout at the Devil" (Crüe being misspelled as "Crew," incidentally).

And to think, I haven't even started reading the comic yet. Ye gods!

OK -- the plot (be warned, I'm about to give it all away): Sam Hain (hmph), "doctor" of the Charred Remains Crematorium in the year 2013, tosses into the oven the corpses brought to him by the soldiers of this apocalyptic future. With each body he heaves with a one-armed, "Get the hell in there," Sam is bombarded with a vision or flashback as the "Flames of Hell" engulf the body, mind and soul of the dead.

We're treated to visions of how the world became such a deplorable place to exist -- disease, war, and widespread sacrilege have swept across society, producing such terrible monstrosities as Demento the Slasher ("One half looked normal except for the mutated freak attached to the other side.") and the twins ("one the essence of purity [the child of an angel], the other born unto evil [bouncing baby of Satan, himself]").

Sam, clearly driven to the edge by the visions, attempts to escape the grounds of the crematorium, but finds himself trapped. Again he is treated to a vision: that of the final battle between Good and Evil. Unfortunately for the world at large, Satan wins, beheading God in the process (with an angry send-off, "I'm your bastard child, you fucked me then dumped me in Hell to rot for eternity!").

Sam is awoken from his trance by a terrible storm, tital waves, and... yes... "Hell's Disciples," The Champions of Hell, themselves. "Each one the epitome of blasphemy -- Evil Incarnate": Enslaver of the Damned; The Carcass; Insaniac; Deadlock, the Ripgut Cannibal; Non Oblitus, the War Pig; The Crucifier of Christ; Pope Golgotha, the Evil Evangelist; The Impaler; Zyklon Götterdam a.k.a. Gas Chamber; Saint Slayer; and The Angel of Death. What a crew.

As I'm not sure if my capsule plot has yet deterred you from this work, I'll begin to examine it on a more evaluative level.

Hunter's writing starts out with some promise. His wording is a little flowery and poetic considering what the cover looks like, but it's an opening paragraph, so it's bound to try and set the scene. He's descriptive and moody, if a bit over the top. Sam's introduced, and Hunter's still not doing too badly. The plot even seems to have some promise... until Sam speaks. Hunter's dialoguing is the first crack in the armor, such as it is. Hackneyed and weak, even in a story like this one, Hunter apparently recognizes his limitation and uses speech sparingly. Using Demento the Slasher to set the scene was Hunter's next mistake. It's a terrible little episode, filled with depravity for the sake of depravity. Hunter's narrative voice, once flowery and poetic becomes as base and childish as the story. A couple of examples from the story of Demento:

"The one [Siamese twin] used to fuck junkie prostitutes while the other half hid under the blankets."

"Even though his brother was an evil prick, he always stood by him..."

And Hunter's downward spiral has only just begun. By the time he gets to the next flashback, he's hit near rock-bottom. Already "impregnated by the Seed of God," and thus destined to be the mother of the next Messiah, a very pregnant woman is defiled by Satan himself ("She writhes in demonic ecstacy as demon semen corrupts her womb" -- I feel icky just typing this.). How what appears to be a 9-month pregnant woman can get pregnant again is beyond me. How she manages to give birth to twins is something else completely. Chalk one up for "demon semen," I reckon.

Finally, the battle between God and Satan. OK -- it's, at base, an interesting reinterpretation of the Biblical story of the casting out of Lucifer. The compliments end there. It's really just an attrocious story, and I'm not even speaking on a theological level. No need to go into depth on it here. I think I've more than faithfully described Hunter's story.

By comparison, Thompson's art isn't all that terrible. He seems, at least, to have a fundamental sense of anatomy and perspective (though drawing pregnant women submitting to Satan's "animal lust" isn't his strong suit). And when he takes his time, he even seems to display a strong sense of design, if clearly influenced by DIO album covers. Aside from an apparent penchant to swipe from Todd McFarlane and Mike Mignola, Thompson's primary problem is that he doesn't possess a strong sense of storytelling when it comes to sequential art. Black gutters and borders confuse the reader's eye, and overly-complicated inter-weaving of panels defies a fluidity the story might have had left. Thompson, in other words, has been overly influenced by the lower end of Chaos! Comics. It's a shame, really.

I suspect that with practice Thompson has some potential. Getting used to the medium, to storytelling, and to a variety of artistic materials will at least improve his work. But Hunter? If this is the road he's headed down, I doubt if it's possible to improve. As I said, Hunter seems to have some rudimentary storytelling skill. But with writers, it's often a question of where they'll apply what skills they have. Some roads are dead ends. Champions of Hell is a very dead one, indeed.