Killer of Demons

I picked this up on a whim at Comic-Con, as it came from the solid creative team of Chris “whole lotta X-books” Yost and Scott “Atomic Robo” Wegener.  The premise, about an ordinary office drone, Dave Sloan chosen by the Almighty to be his demon-slaying agent on Earth also sounded pretty nifty.  Unfortunately, while Yost gets some good zingers in with the dialogue, he forces the main character’s arc and the story itself into some pretty contrived places.  His decision to play up Dave’s ambivalence about his work, and his sanity as well, is a storytelling dead-end.  The book is called “Killer of Demons” after all, so whenever the subject of him being crazy is brought up, it comes off as nothing more than false tension.  This is symptomatic of a larger problem with Dave as Yost pretty much has the character responding to any situation in a way that the beats of the plot dictate him to.  He never comes off as a three-dimensional character and remains a cipher whose sole purpose is to assume the stock emotional response for whatever scene he finds himself in.

What salvages the story to the point where I didn’t feel that it was a complete waste of my time and money was Wegner.  The man has already shown us on “Atomic Robo” that he has a knack for drawing all kinds of craziness and for great deadpan visual humor.  That’s on full display here as we get to see all sorts of demons mixing with the most mundane aspects of modern life, like fast-food service.  He also delivers some great action sequences, such as Dave’s battle with a cabal of satanists led by a stripper in a schoolgirl outfit, and a one-page assault on a demon from the second floor of an asylum with nothing but a pen.  In his mouth.  To the extent that anything in this story works can pretty much be attributed to Wegner’s skill and how well his style fits the material.  Though a sequel is clearly set up at the end of this collection, I’d still rather see him continue to work on “Atomic Robo” or something more deserving of his talents.