Source: comicvine.gamespot.com
10. Cursed: Part Two of the Demon Triptych
Writer: Bill Willingham
Artist: Tom Derenick
Final issue – of my look at Shadowpact, not the series as a whole. And I can’t tell how self aware this series is. It’s confusing. Remember how I mentioned how silly and obvious the Three Laws were in the last issue? Well, on the first page of this one, a reporter asks other superheroes about them, and all of them pretty much say what I said. In addition, Blue Devil makes another s****y comment about Eddie’s disability, but Eddie responds how gross and rude it is this time.
So, either A: Willingham doesn’t really think that these things in his book are bad, and he’s just paying lip service to the responses of people like me; or B: He DOES know that they’re artifacts of his bad writing, and he thinks that pointing them out puts a band-aid on it (it doesn’t). Either way, it makes me feel like I’m wasting my time.
In this issue, Shadowpact is recuperating from the last issue’s loss to Etrigan. With most of the team down, Blue Devil and Nightshade are in a bar, recruiting three more heroes to go to hell and fight Etrigan. And with our heroes literally going to hell, that’s where we have to end.
Needless to say, these first ten issues haven’t inspired me to read a lot more. I own the entire series, so I’ll read ‘em, but so far it’s mostly just a huge disappointment. I was really hoping this book would give me a new love and appreciation for these characters, but they are nowhere near fleshed-out enough to do that. They’re all basically just bland, until the story needs them to be a**holes, in which case they become bland a**holes.
Hell, I already knew and loved Nightshade and Enchantress from Suicide Squad, but this series made me forget why for a bit. At best, these are mediocre mid-2000s DC comics that you don’t need to read. At BEST. I’m really sad to have to write something this negative, because I was really excited about this, but here we are. I believe my next installment will be for another DC book, but one that I’m sure I’ll almost definitely like. I mean, me not liking it would be a MIRACLE, if you catch my drift (wink, wink).
