Sacred Creatures vol. 1: A Mixture of Madness

When I heard that this new series, co-written and co-illustrated by Pablo Raimondi and Klaus Janson, was going to feature oversized issues I regarded it as a good thing.  With most comics clocking in at 20-22 pages an issue, having one that ranges from 45-66 pages with the bigger ones only costing a dollar more sounds like a great value for your money particularly as it was coming from a talented creative team.  Yup. Great value. Talented creators. Nothing can go wrong here. You can see where this is going as these oversized issues turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing. Raimondi and Janson haven’t given us more of a good thing they’ve given us an indulgent mess that was honestly a chore to read through.

It starts off with some mysterious people spouting ominous dialogue in a New York penthouse at night before jumping over to a guy in a bloodstained shirt in an elevator expressing remorse over something he’s done.  This guy is confronted by the cops when he gets down to the street, only for everyone to be distracted by a guy who falls onto a car from several stories up. To everyone’s surprise this guy, a priest, isn’t dead and promptly gets up.  Then the story gives us a big double-page title spread and informs us that we’re jumping back to eight days prior to all of this.

There’s nothing wrong with starting a story in media res like this, but the fewer working parts in that kind of opening the better.  What really starts to sink the story is the extended flashback to what was happening with bloodstained-shirt-guy, whose name we learn is Josh Miller and that he’s got a very important job interview coming up as well as a fiancee who’s about to give birth.  This promising life he has is upended when he has encounters with seven strange individuals that throw his life into complete disarray. The ways in which they do this range from the mundane, causing him to sleep in bed for days at a time; to the carnal, compelling him to have sex with the first woman he sees; to the criminal, getting him to murder someone in exchange for a great job.

As all this happens you’re left more confused than intrigued.  All of this happens to Josh without any rhyme or reason that the reader can see.  Not helping matters any is the fact that Josh makes for a pretty bland protagonist.  It’s really hard to care about the fact that his life is being ruined for reasons unknown, and in ways that are regrettably lacking in imagination, when he doesn’t make that much of an impression by himself.

Yet it turns out that there is a reason we should care about what’s happening to Josh.  That’s because these seven individuals are the physical incarnations of the Seven Deadly Sins.  They’ve been trapped on Earth since mankind first came into existence, kept in check by an angel that was set to watch over them.  Along with Josh and an ancient dagger, they’ve finally found a way to deal with this angel and run free across Earth like they’ve always wanted.

None of this information is in the first chapter/issue.  In fact, you’ll have to get a third of the way through this three-hundred-plus page volume before this, the main thrust of the series, is finally revealed.  Raimondi and Janson taking their sweet time getting this point wouldn’t be a problem if the route they took was interesting. Yet it’s one filled with familiar characters, long-winded speeches, and dramatic contrivances that commit the worst sin of all — making violence and dashes of sexuality boring.

Raimondi and Janson at least work to make the volume look nice.  They’re both industry veterans and I’ve always had an appreciation for the former’s work on the “Madrox” miniseries and subsequent “X-Factor” title with Peter David.  His art doesn’t have the same kind of depth here as it did in those titles, but it’s still quite nice to look at. I also want to note that Raimondi does his best to sell the stated emotions of his characters in the art, even if he doesn’t succeed on a consistent basis.

Janson is best known in the industry for inking Frank Miller’s work on “Daredevil” and “The Dark Knight Returns” while also being an impressive artist in his own right.  With his work on “Sacred Creatures” Janson gets to have the last laugh as he shows that he’s still able to deliver quality work, especially compared to Miller these days.  Even if Janson’s characters tend to be somewhat blocky and stiff in the flashback sequences, he’s able to render the biblical disasters of the flashback sequences with appropriate gusto.  In fact, the flashback sequences are where all of the really interesting visuals of the series happen so it’s fortunate that Janson was able to bring his A-game to them.

The best thing I can say about “Sacred Creatures” is that if you stick it out to the end, everything starts to make a certain amount of sense and a clear direction for the story emerges.  This is assuming that you’ve got the determination it takes to power through the turgid storytelling the series has trafficked in up to that point. I made it through and even I’ve got serious doubts as to whether or not I’ve wasted my time in doing so.  That’s even before I start thinking about when the next volume of the series will be coming out. No new issues have been solicited yet, but that could be because Raimondi and Janson are hard at work on all of the pages that this second volume will consist of.  If they’re smart, then this second volume will be a concluding one. More doesn’t always mean better as this first volume of “Sacred Creatures” proves much to its detriment.