Stitched vol. 2

If you go into this expecting a particularly brutal kind of slasher movie, then I guess you’ll be satisfied.  Mike Wolfer takes over full scripting duties from Garth Ennis with this second volume, and tries expanding on the mythos and reach of the title creatures.  This is done through the machinations of an unsavory trader named Salib who managed to get his hands on some of the Stitched before the army wiped out the slaver camp from the previous novel’s climax with a missile strike.  He’s planning to sell them, and a mysterious drum he found along with these things, to the highest bidder.  That turns out to be a rich old Englishman in Sri Lanka.  The trip there is notable for the fact that U.S. special forces squad winds up being assigned to take out Salib before he can get there.  All I’ll say about their efforts is that the predictably bloody results of this attack set the tone for the rest of the comic, for better or for worse.

That’s because most of the action centers on the various characters being shot, stabbed, and dismembered in a variety of ways that seem to be catered more towards appeasing gorehounds than actual storytelling.  Wolfer’s execution of all this is competent enough, and artist Fernando Heinz Furukawa is at least on the same page as him when it comes to this kind of stuff.  Don’t expect any surprises, though, even when to explaining a possible origin for the Stitched.  It involves the British colonization of India, a demon, and a woman who wouldn’t die and had to be sealed away forever.  For what it’s worth, it’s a decent enough little horror story even if it is ruined afterwards by “the last of the black, festering, rage-filled sentient semen of a demon from Hell.”  Yeah.  This is a thing in the series now.  If everything here sounds like your idea of a good time, then you’re welcome to it.  As for me, I think I’ll be giving vol. 3 a pass if I ever see it in one of the half-off boxes at a convention.