1 out of 5

I suppose if you view the previous arc as Jason Blood’s concluding tale, you could call this Garth’s ending for the Demon, but it still seems incredibly odd to pretty much abandon Blood for these issues, even if it was done with awareness of cancellation.  By isolating it from ongoing threads or concepts, it robs the story of any sense of consequence; it’s very clearly written as a balls-out lark, except it’s not even all that balls-out.

The archangel of war, for whatever reason, decides that he’s tired of the way Hell is currently run (there’s a tossed off attempt to tie this to Etrigan’s appearance, briefly, at heaven’s gate in a past issue, but it’s way too clearly just the spark for the battle – there’s no real sense of enmity) and so incites heaven’s angely occupants to come and tussle with him against evil, because something something he can rule Hell more effectively because that is a logical plan for an angel.

Hell – here pitched as the underdog good guys, with, surprisingly, almost nil Ennis snide regarding religion and morals – panics, and they need Etrigan to lead the fight.  But Etrigan is dang depressed and not rhyming after being shut down by JB!  …For all of like three pages, and then he’s back in business, and cue three issues of really boring and stakeless warefare.

It’s not that Garth doesn’t try – he brings back old enemies; he adds a MacGuffin of sorts with Hell’s crown – but there’s no logic to the conflict or the gains and losses:  Etrigan can punch a guy’s Head off amd recover from being run over, but is halted by a sword slash;  Archangel Karrien Excalibris appears out of nowhere (at least to me, an Ennis-only reader) and has no excessive ability beyond being able to shout; feints are made toward turning the tide by sowing seeds of doubt regarding the amgels’ pupeose, but Garth drops these threads as soon as he starts tjem.  This lack of consequence and reasonable justification was a problem in the last arc, but we were saved by a Hitman appearance and McCrea gusto.

Baylor’s here, for what that’s worth, bit he’s more of a one-joke character than Hitman, and setting the entire story in Hell encourages McCrea to do plain red backgrounds against rubble for the entire story, with every angel a lookalike and surprisingly few nifty demons beyond Etty’s core crew.

In other words: both art and story tank.

The Demon, overall, felt like a warm up for much better Garth things to come.  It would’ve been interesting to know how much cancellation changed this last arc, but nonetheless, it’s ineffective as a standalone or as a capper to an already underwhelming run..