In Hell We Fight! #3 Review
In Hell We Fight from Image Comics is now up to its third issue, and that’s where I came in. Always find it interesting coming into a story arch that is already well underway. You either end up totally lost or can just jump in and be instantly up to speed.
Thankfully, this book falls into the latter category, thanks to a three-panel catch-up at the start of the book and a handy narrator! As it turns out, a Demon-Dragon, from Hell (obvs!), has kidnapped an Angel, by the name of Angel, and taken them to Hell in order to start a war between Heaven and Hell. Unfortunately for the dammed Dragon, Angel is kidnapped during the attempted kidnapping by a group of random dammed souls who decide to take Angel back to Heaven.
In truth, In Hell We Fight #3 is a bit of a filler book, but does promise some interesting things to come. We see the Demon Dragon, Koroso The Terrible, hire a group of hellish mercenaries and send them off to track down the Angel and their would-be savours. And that’s pretty much all we see of them. Instead, the book follows the group who saved the Angel to a city in Hell to see an antique dealer in an attempt to get a map that will lead them to Heaven.
John Layman and Jok clearly let their imaginations run wild when coming up with this story, as pretty much every aspect is about as left field as you’d expect from a story, and characters, set in Hell. One of the bunch still has the axe in his head from when he was murdered, and another poor sod keeps throwing up random, and seemingly useless, items.
The art and colours have a slightly messy gothic tinge that suits the story really well. I am a big fan of the narration that runs throughout the book and changes from driving the story to dropping random comments and observations as needed. Some of the pages have a little too much speech in them, to the point where they even cut away a couple of the bubbles in some panels, getting away with it as a style choice, some of which could probably have been cut down without losing anything.
Some of the scenery that we travel through and the Hell puns that are scattered in there make the book fun. The characters are also good fun, and the backstory of the antique dealer is a particular highlight. The only slightly flat character was the Angel, but it’s pretty hard to comment on that sort of thing when coming in at issue #3!
That could be the point of the character, or they could have been front and center in the other books, there’s just no way to know. Well, there is, just read the other issues, but you know what I mean. I’m not too sure what I was expecting from this book, maybe more fighting? It does look like it’s going that way, with this issue as a bridge to a big dust-up about to come. Overall, it’s a fun book, with some great ideas and an interesting story that could go a few different ways due to character motives ranging from the noble to the sadistic, to just plain confused and deranged. Definitely worth a look.
Jay is an Auto Electrician and wanna-be writer from Manchester, UK. A long-time lover of comics, books, movies, and TV, he decided to try his hand at writing some of them around 2016. Since then, he has produced and self-published a number of comics, including ALV and the KA Anthology, and also his first novel, Domeinion.
Jay’s first full-length graphic novel was released in 2022, Knights Vs Pirates, with the small press publisher Reckless Hero, and remains a member of the group to this day. Jay can also be found on the video/podcasts The Movie Garage and Man Vs Reality. not action figures.
