Publisher: Dark Horse
Writer: Victor Gishler
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
Release Date: 2nd July 2014

Barnabus Black is a Bad Ass Mother Fucker. That sentence alone should be enough to attract your attention, and it couldn’t be more true. Black, the lead in Kiss Me, Satan, is the epitome of the ever-popular monster hunter Trope. With his cool fashion, brooding demeanor, shaved head and mysterious history, it would be understandable if the book was written off as some sort of cheesy throwback to 70’s B-movies, but it’s actually so much more than that.

Enough can’t be said about Ferrerya’s art on the book as it’s nothing short of perfect. He seems just as at home with sleek clean lines and expressive faces as he is at high-end gory splash pages that – while shocking at first – seem to fit in perfectly and somehow don’t seem gratuitous at all. Seriously though, the book is beautiful. There’s a certain ease with which it seems to have been drawn that makes it all look effortless. I’ll try not to gush too much though as i think i could fill the review with praise for Ferrerya alone!

Gishler has done something special here as well, which is to write a book that is, at it’s core, a straightforward ‘chase’ book with a man trying to protect four women on the run from a scary werewolf that has put a hit out on all of them. In a world where all the nasties you’ve ever had nightmares about appear to be true, this actually doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary at all. However, in the undertones of the series there’s more than a hint of family turmoil, of a man trying to prove he’s not as bad as people think he is – and a cherub in a 3 piece suit that wouldn’t seem out of place in a flapper club. Gishler’s writing has just enough humour in it to prevent this book taking itself too seriously, with certain attributes he’s given Black in his fight against the “evil forces” providing some genuinely laugh out loud moments.

It’s not until the book reaches it’s mid-point though where it could go either way, and I’m happy to report that it only gets better in the second half – everything gets a ramp-up towards the finale, from the tightness of the art to the quickened pace of the story.

I honestly can’t do justice to how good this book is, and how it’s a testament to the fact that, even though it’s using decades old tropes that have been done a million times before; it still manages to have a new feel to it. If, like me, you missed out in getting it in single issues, you truly owe it to yourself to buy this book. It’s this kind of thing that money should be spent on, to prove to the industry we need more of it, instead of the run of the mill, paint by numbers pish that seems to dominate the market these days.

Rating: 5/5.

The writer of this piece was: Chris Bennett
Article: And Now For Something Completely Different
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