2 out of 5

Ah, comics, the sweet marriage of art and words.  And when that marriage fails…  Well, sometimes, yes, it’s possible for the script to squeeze by with substandard art.  Vice versa less so, unless you’re truly enamored with the artist, regardless of what they’re working on.  But often enough, each creative is propping up the other.  With Bunn, that’s absolutely the case, as his maudlin tendencies can be scored with seriousness via Brian Hurtt (Sixth Gun) or Tyler Crook (Harrow County) – and to be fair, I do think that seeing finished pages then influences the writer’s style in return, so Bunn’s stepped up his game on those books – or, as has happened in… most of his other titles, the art just doesn’t serve the tone of the book well.  Or it does, and it just ends up exposing Cullen’s weaknesses.

When I first saw Brian Churilla on his creator-owned Engineer, I really dug his cartoonish dimensions and Mignola-esque simplicity; and they were a good match for the cosmic creepos in that tale.  But when the length of that book got chopped down, his writing on it didn’t seem to compress well, and the end product was lacking.  Since then, I’ve rarely seen him well paired with a title.  Phil Hester’s Anchor was an acceptable match, as Phil’s Big Ideas suited Churilla’s bubbly figures, but the story didn’t build well.  What I see elsewhere with Churilla’s work – and what is my main problem with his Hellbreak work here – is that he does not handle complicated tableaus well at all, to the extent of dropping very obvious details (faces! in one example) such that the panels start to look amateurish.  This is a pretty great idea from Cullen, about a specialized agency – the Kerberos Group – which trains squads to literally go to different versions of Hell (via some as-yet unexplained technology) and rescue wrongly imprisoned souls, while meanwhile, back in reality, a Kerberos-employed priest does an exorcism to clear the victim’s body of demons for the return of said soul.  I say ‘squads’ plural but we only spend time with one group here, ‘Omega,’ which is a big minus to the first arc: that it feels ridiculously isolated for what’s supposedly a big corporate machine.  Part of this is on Churilla’s undetailed art, but a huge part of it is on Bunn for not making his comic reality feel more fleshed out.  Before I jump to that, though, we have a potentially heavy tale dealing with sins and Hell (excusing the usual action movie humor interplay of tough guy and smart guy and sassy girl) which opens up tons of potential for fantastic worlds… and none of that comes across visually.  The opening sequence is interesting, but past that, Hell is a boring place.  And Churilla commits one of my more bothersome pet peeves by dropping or including obvious elements: a figure carrying an item of interest for one panel and then that item never appears again; a “group” of fighters who appear to be five or so people… except random faces keep popping up in that core five, so who knows.  Brian needs a lighter tone for his art to work, and Dave Stewart, frankly, feels like he’s dialing in the colors here since he doesn’t have much to work with without overwhelming Churilla’s art.

Regarding the writing, I’ve already introduced the main criticism, which is that the story seems huge… but then what we’re shown and told doesn’t sync up with that.  But I’m willing to give Bunn some benefit of the doubt on that, as Sixth Gun had a rough start that now makes sense in retrospect.  Less willing to swallow the empty, cookie-cutter characters, though.  I don’t care about a single member on the team at this point; they’re not inherently interesting like Drake in Sixth Gun, all matching a generalized character-type mold.  Add that to the story that doesn’t dig deep enough (pun intended), and Hellbreak isn’t near as engaging as it should / could be.  I also have to call b.s. on a gay (maybe) character all of a sudden appearing after the letters page has someone saying they’re disappointed in the lack of diversity in the cast.  Meh.  Also: said letters appear in only one issue.  Wee.

I’m hanging in there, because I keep hoping Bunn finds another title that gives him mythology room since SG will presumably be wrapping up sooner rather than later.  Harrow County has potential, but it feels more rustic; I like the fantastic possibilities Hellbreak presents.  Too bad this first “arc” only serves to establish the concept and not much more.