Hell to Pay: A Tale of the Shrouded College
That subtitle makes this miniseries sound more intimidating than it actually is. “A Tale of the Shrouded College” gives you the impression that you’re buying into a story that’s larger than the one being told here. I can tell you that’s not the case as its creator, writer Charles Soule, states at the end of this volume that all of the stories he’s planning to tell here will function independently of each other. Until the final one which is supposed to bring them all together.
As for how enticing “Hell to Pay” makes that sound, the verdict is still out. It’s not that I doubt Soule hasn’t thought this through. It’s that I feel he’s thought out this particular story too much, to the point where its fantastical ideas are undermined by protagonists who are sympathetic on the surface, but kind of terrible underneath.
Despite having their name as the subtitle, the Shrouded College isn’t the main focus of this story. That would be Sebastian and Maia Stone, who were recruited by it after they were involved in an awful automobile accident. Not only did the College offer to heal them, but they also offered them magic to use in pursuit of an objective: Securing the six-hundred-and-sixty-six hellcoins, each capable of summoning a demon by whoever has one, that were brought from Hell to Earth.
The good news for them is that, as the story opens, they’re down to collecting the very last one. It seems like getting it from a rich and powerful bastard is going to be easy enough… until Sebastian and Maia both wind up getting a coin. What does this mean? It means that their work isn’t over and the Shrouded College isn’t done with them yet.
The idea behind the Shrouded College is solid enough. It’s a mysterious, magical entity that has its fingers in a lot of supernatural operations, and enough willing or quasi-willing humans to undertake them. As a vehicle for telling any kind of story, Soule has come up with a good one here.
Regarding the one being told here, it’s not bad overall. We get a sense of the scope of the College’s ambitions, a detailed explanation of Hell’s role in our finances, and an antagonist who’s just that rather than a proper villain. The strongest part of this volume is when we finally get his backstory and find out why he’s doing what he’s doing. It winds up being an effective mix of tragedy and genuine rage at the way the world is. His ambitions are actually noble, even if the means by which he’s trying to fulfill them are monstrous.
Another reason the antagonist winds up being so interesting is because the protagonists of this tale are dumb, and arguably kinda awful. That’s not entirely their fault as Soule is writing them with a very obvious mindset: They feel they’re stuck in a bad situation due to debt and want to get out of it ASAP. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of setup, except it’s not sold very well here.
When we’re introduced to Sebastian and Maia, they look like they’re having a lot of fun taking this rich target for his treasure. Subsequent scenes show them to have acquired a number of useful magical relics, and also to have made a friend or two while doing the College’s work. Even if they’re worried about a very specific thing – and it’s also a thing that you’d think their employers would be able to sense – their desire to escape this life doesn’t quite gel with how we see them on the page.
Then there’s the fact that this desperation we’re told they feel leads them to do some pretty dumb things. Things like go back on their word to a trusted source, rope in a friend who got out of this life to help them on this job, and go against the College when things take a turn for the worse. While it’s not unreasonable for people to make bad choices when the cards are against them, it doesn’t feel like that here. It feels like they’re being written this way because that’s the kind of story they’re in. Rather than have his protagonists find a better, cleverer way out, Soule had them take the easiest and most obvious one in every situation.
At least these bad choices look good thanks to this story’s artist, Will Sliney. He’s got a solid yet flashy style that goes a long way towards selling “Hell to Pay” as the big supernatural blockbuster it aims to be. Better still is that he’s got a lot of versatility when it comes to presenting the story. This manifests in some interesting yet unconventional panel layouts, and a credible ability to draw everything that Soule asks him to. It means we get a Hell that’s ornate in its monstrosity with a varied host of demons all willing to feed human greed.
Which is really what this particular installment of “The Shrouded College” is all about. Soule thought long and hard about the old adage, “Money is the root of all evil,” and decided to take it to its logical conclusion. This results in an interesting enough story that’s hamstrung by protagonists who treat it more like a burden than a grand adventure. So it’s no great loss that they won’t be part of the next story in this series, “The Bloody Dozen” which see Soule reunite with his “Letter 44” collaborator Alberto Jimenez Albuquerque for a tale about a jailbreak from a vampire prison in space. I’ll be there for the premise alone, though I do hope its main characters try to enjoy themselves a little – even amidst those circumstances.