Review – Deliver Us From Evil #1 (Second Sight Publishing)

Posted on July 23, 2022 in Small Press Reviews

Publisher: Second Sight Publishing
Writer: Peter Breau
Artist: Mattia Doghini

Repeatedly interspersed with disconcerting glimpses into the historical depravity of mankind whenever steered by the whispered word of the Devil, Peter Breau’s plot for issue one of Deliver Us From Evil is probably best perused with the lights on and a stiff drink to hand. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine a reader experiencing a more disturbing twenty-two-page periodical as they’re brutally thrown into the chaos-filled world of the mysterious Mister Lazar and the seemingly diabolical doings of D.R.E.D.D.

Foremost of these perturbances is probably the way in which Breau pens the lead protagonist effortlessly wandering through life without so much as a single care, no matter what horrifying situation it causes him to witness. Some within this book’s audience may well think that being arrested by the Police for multiple warrants and a subsequent thirteen-year prison sentence is grim going, especially when the writer does such a splendid job in describing the savage nature of the penitentiary’s hierarchy; “The Yard. A perverse adult version of Elementary School. It’s primal… Wolves and Sheep. But butchers don’t concern themselves with the opinions of wolves or sheep.”

However, such a violent environment pales into insignificance once Lazar has been transported to Montauk via a black operation’s helicopter and given a sight-seeing tour of the enigmatic facility’s numerous underground levels. This sequence is truly haunting and is simply packed full of glimpses into exotic extra-terrestrial worlds, prehistoric subsistence, nefarious governmental cover-ups, anthropomorphized felines and age-old science fiction tropes – all of which are both unnervingly familiar and freakishly flabbergasting.

Just as discombobulating as this publication’s pleasing plot is Mattia Doghini’s engrossing artwork, which adds an incredible amount of atmosphere to the storytelling, courtesy of the artist’s heavily shadowed sketching style and the decision to boldly print the comic in just black and white. The illustrator’s double splash-page of Montauk’s interior is well worth the cost of this comic alone as it should take any perusing bibliophile an eternity to fully assimilate all the different dimensions it depicts. Whilst the sudden appearance of an amiable, talking sasquatch and ghoulish nun later in the narrative are prodigiously pencilled, with both characters being imbued with plenty of personality despite their extremely limited ‘screen-time’.

[PREVIEW ARTWORK – CLICK TO ENLARGE]