In Hell We Fight! vol. 1: A Snowball’s Chance

Midori Fukada, Ernie Comstock, and Xander Waterford all have one thing in common:  They’re in actual, literal HELL right now.  Whether or not they belong there depends on who you ask, but they’re trying to make the best of their current situation.  Which involves robbing one of the biggest, baddest demon lords for one of the most precious of substances in the underworld – ice cream!  They’re doing this with the help of one of said demon lord’s many sons, Balphie, and outside of some late-game interference from some demon frogs, it looks like it’s going to go off without a hitch.  Until they find out that the little piece of heaven they’re trying to steal is an actual little piece of Heaven.

In a just world we’d likely be coming up on the end of “Outer Darkness,” the great sci-fi/horror series writer John Layman did with artist Afu Chan following the writer’s breakout success with “Chew.”  Fortunately for us, Layman hasn’t given up on trying to make another creator-owned series work and now we’ve got this comedy/horror/adventure series about a group of oddballs trying to make it in Hell.  While the general arc of the first volume follows familiar coming-of-age tropes mixed with the expected amount of teenage angst, it distinguishes itself from other such stories by virtue of its writer’s demented imagination.  Frog Devils, a sentient haunted house, a cursed axe lodged in a kid’s head that keeps regenerating itself whenever it’s removed, and a talking puppet that knows how to haggle, are just some of the crazy things you’ll see in this volume.

All of which are rendered with squiggly glee by its artist, Jok.  Not to be confused with the other artist with a homophonic name and whose straight lines imply kinetic action, this Buenos Aires-born illustrator is big on fiddly details in his work which comport well with the setting and its overall surrealism.  Which is good because omnipotent demon lords, ambitious dragons, and angry demon frogs are the least of what he’s called upon to illustrate here.  All of which means that this first volume has good writing backed up by good art in service of a winningly oddball premise.  In short, it’s a first volume that deserves a better chance than what its subtitle implies.