2 out of 5

‘A Dragon in Hell’ is a forced one-shot.  It’s a story born out of a desire to write a story as opposed to the need to fill in a gap in another tale, or perhaps that flash of inspiration that requires its own outlet.  No, El Torres wanted to use Savage Dragon, and after getting permission, he formed a story around it, taking his own Image Comics creation – Nancy – and smashing the two properties (or actually Dragon’s son, Malcolm) together for something that reads like the forced tale it is.  It keeps with Nancy continuity and makes shoutouts to Dragon history, so there’s fun for both fans, but there’s also nothing really to move either character forward, so its empty fun.  And empty fun without that ‘flash’ I mention is generally worth about two stars in my book.

Plot: Dragon gets sucked into Hell, meets Nancy and Lucifer.  There’s a fight with some demons.  Dragon leaves Hell.

Enrique Lorenzana’s art and color is amazing for static shots and pin-ups, but like a lot of uber-detailed photo-realistic stuff, it gets really stuffy looking when action scenes are required.  He also didn’t really create any fully realized spaces to me, giving the flow a somewhat nebulous feel.

And Amigo comics desperately needs an editor.  The funky wording is part of the charm of the imprint’s bi-lingual printing, but this book was littered with misspellings and missing words to the extent that it broke any sense of pacing.

Thankfully, El Torres overall charm and the effortful vibe that the Amigo books give off makes this readable.  But it’s really only for collectors of either character.