Editor's Note: Dead of Night: Devil-Slayer #2 arrives in stores tomorrow, October 8.

"By Demons Driven"

There is one interesting thing established in this issue. That the new Devil-Slayer had a great-uncle named Payne who was the previous Devil-Slayer, providing a genetic link to the regular MU version of the character. Except in the MAX world, he's apparently dead and gone somehow, somewhere, sometime.

And therein lies the real problem with this comic. It's all so obvious and cliche with no real attempt to create something new and exciting. Which is kind of a surprise with Keene, since the greatest strength of his zombie novels, The Rising and City of the Dead, is that while he utilizes the cliches of the genre, he also adds some very interesting original concepts and exciting twists and turns to the plot, ultimately building to climaxes that pay off wonderfully.

So far with Devil-Slayer, though, we're just getting the cliche part.

Before I go any further, I want to just say that Samnee's art is good. It's a little minimalist, which actually helps with the realism somehow. His violence is sufficiently gory and extreme for a horror story of this sort. I wish he'd loosen up with his conceptualization of things demonic, as they're a bit overly anthropomorphic for my tastes. But that's a minor quibble.

There are also a couple of moments that didn't work for me, but I can't be sure if they were script problems or poor layout choices. I'll mention those in a minute.

For now, I'm going to be throwing some spoilers at you, so duck.

The story really focuses on two huge cliches that have essentially become trite and meaningless unless handled with some creativity. So there's a secret pact between a group of demons and angels to initiate the Apocalypse. Haven't seen that before. And apparently what these Demons do is go places where there's bloody conflict, sneak in and mutilate and kill a bunch of people for some reason. Then they go do it somewhere else. Apparently, these ritual sacrifices allow them to harvest the "energy" from human "souls," and when they have enough they can unleash Hell on Earth. Literally.

Then Heaven sees that Hell has broken their peace treaty (or whatever) and comes in with angelic guns a'blazin'. Presto! Instant Apocalypse. Why anyone on either side would want or need an official war when they can go about what they're doing anyway is anyone's guess.

The second cliche is making Devil-Slayer a generational, "chosen one" type of hero. I suppose it makes sense, in an extremely easy and unimaginative way, to do this, given the silly reasoning behind Huge Cliche Number One. However, it ends up revealing the inherent silliness of Huge Cliche Number Two when we start to explore it a little. Where does he get his power and authority? Why can there only be one if there is an army of demons? Why is there only one weapon that can kill demons? Where did it come from?

The entire concept is one that needs to be approached in a more imaginative manner, as Brubaker and Fraction did in Immortal Iron Fist. The establishment of a legacy for a character requires the time to build the groundwork and the history to make it work. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer did that. And did I mention that Devil-Slayer has his own Watcher? Of course he does.

Adding to these central problems, we get a number of poor storytelling decisions as well. As our hero runs away from the demons, who are firing automatic weapons at him, rather than duck to the side as he makes his escape, he runs straight from the doorway through which they are shooting. There really is no way they could miss him, except for that old stand-by cliche of the bad guys never shooting straight.

Devil-Slayer blows up demons with a grenade launcher, but seems to be way too close to them to effectively disintegrate them but leave himself unharmed. Are these two examples problems with the script or the layouts? Who knows.

Devil-Slayer's Watcher chooses to jump between Devil-Slayer and the head demon before intoning a holding spell, when he could have done that first, from a safe distance. But then he wouldn't be killed, of course, passing on the role of Watcher to his elderly assistant. Huh?

Yeah, that really didn't serve any purpose except apparently to provide us with an elderly side-kick with sass. You know, because he's an assistant Watcher, he's got a little attitude and does things a little differently from his young master. Huh?

I'm also not sure why the Devil-Slayer's magic sword was in an Iraqi museum. What did the previous Devil-Slayer use to slay devils, then? How long ago did he die and pass on the sword? Why do they have to hide it and crawl through a cave to get it, if it would kill any demon who touched it? Was that just to keep looters from grabbing it? Then why all the magic safeguards?

Why is the traditional uniform of the Devil-Slayer just a turban and a tattered cape? Couldn't he at least get a new cape?

Overall, this issue was a great disappointment. I don't know if next issue's promise of zombie-killing mayhem can pull it back from the brink before its conclusion the following month. I'm afraid that this book is going to be like the other Max titles that I've sampled (aside from Ennis' run on Punisher, of course): Fairly strong starts with realistic, ultra-violent art and a grounding of characters in the "real" world that then lose my interest by not going far enough or being inventive enough to escape those "real" world limitations. Does that even make sense? It does to me.

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