1 out of 5

Hellbreak was off from the start.  It was a sweet idea – a team of special operatives dispatch by the church into hell to rescue the displaced souls of those unjustly placed there by demons – but was written with an offhand manner that didn’t seem to do its potential just.  It’s possible that Bunn was going for pulpy cheek with its tone, but it’s equally possible – given the book’s disappearance after issue 10 or 11 (which might’ve been digital only..?), as far as I can tell – that the writer’s other projects, including many, many DC and Marvel books, caused it to fall to a lower priority, further possibly encouraged by a lack of sales.  Who knows?  All I knows when I read it is how loose and almost sloppy it feels, which isn’t helped by Brian Churilla’s art, for which I would add the same adjectives.

These remaining issues (I was waiting for more before reviewing because this doesn’t read like the end of an arc, but as mentioned, the fate of the book after 10, to me, is a question mark) rather seal the “don’t give a fuck” deal, with the story devolving into a churn of scenes which exist just to get to the next one, and Brian’s art looking like a sketchbook by issue 10.

And let me back up for a second before I run over Churilla however many more times.  He’s by no means a bad artist, I just don’t know if he’s ever found his proper place in comics.  He got tagged as a monster-drawer, and so seems attached to a lot of books dealing with such.  And while he has some undoubtedly cool visual ideas (witnessed in book 7 here), he really has a tough time selling texture and space, which means the coolness unfortunately doesn’t extend far past the idea.  I’ve also previously gotten the sense that he either gets really, really bored while drawing or is really slow, because as his series go on, he gets looser, and drops his already scant backgrounds even more.  Again: Texture and space.  Way back on The Engineer, his style excited me.  But then there was a huge delay before that series concluded, and when it did, the problems I mention were present.  And they’ve been ever-present when I’ve seen his work since.

As I move forward again, let me veer and run over Bunn: Issue 7’s rescue mission leads into a storyline in 8-10 where the rescue team is stuck in Hell, demons trying to convince them to give up the goods on how to cross over.  There is no conclusion to 7’s mission, nor any transition to 8.  From 8 to 10, Bunn does intro-to-writing character work to try to justify each team member’s reason for joining up while cycling through 2 or 3 other potential subplots that never develop past their introductions.  This is tragically stupid, see-what-sticks stuff, wherein things that are said dont necessarily line up with what’s shown, and no tone – funny, scary, tragic, silly – emerges, leaving us in this wasteland of wondering when this story will ever actually start of it already has nevermind.

Looking back at the art in the first issue, and being a fan of some of Cullen’s other works – Sixth Gun, Harrow County – I know these creators are capable.  But something went off the rails almost from the start of this series, and these last few issues are a slow, boring death, grasping at straws and discarding them seconds later, until really looking / reading like everyone just shrugged their shoulders at issue 10.