2 out of 5

Neither campy enough or lore-y enough to make an impression either way, Nancy In Hell is an odd duck for an Image book as well, featuring the more Avatar-aligned Juan Jose Ryp’s porn-y poses and excess gore at a time when the imprint was moving more toward indie styling a la Saga, and less toward Spawn-adjacent blood and boobs.

El and Juan would later find a better outlet for this type of self-aware T&A with Rogues, but at this point, the writer can’t decide if he’s going to make his scantily clad Nancy solely defined by her image (a leather-looking bra, permanently exposed ‘neath a tearing white tank top; frayed-to-bikini-bottoms daisy duke-style jeans) or actually give her a personality, and Ryp’s never-met-a-detail-I-didn’t-want-in-the-foreground overload makes his inventive Hellish landscapes and creatures all mish-mash together, especially since the color palette can’t go far beyond red guts and white flesh.

…Which is one of several aspects I was surprised didn’t have just a bit more thought behind: how white this Hell (and our glimpses of heaven) are.  And maybe asking for thought seems silly in what’s perhaps intended to be straight up late-nite entertainment, but Torres brings in various literary afterworld references and starts to weave an intriguing mythology of Hell being of our own design, and of a repentant Lucifer – who teams up with Nancy – and flashbacks to a more-than-meets-the-eye final girl ending for our lead…

El has shown his ability to do pretty ace scares and world-building on titles before and after this, so these bits give us hope that the title might veer into some surprising territory, but ultimately, it does not, veering away from any exciting aspect for Nancy chainsawing through someone she’s swearing at.  Antonio Vasquez and Malaka Studios take over for art in issues three and four – rather ridiculously omitted from cover credits, since they handled half the book – and while some of the figurework is a little off and the landscapes are lacking in the crazy overkill of Ryp’s, the general balance of readability of these issues is much better.

The trade also includes some pinups and an amusingly silly short illustrated by Abel Garcia.