Lucky Devil #3

Lucky Devil #3

Dark Horse Comics 2021

Written by Cullen Bunn

Illustrated by Fran Galán

Lettered by El Torres

After an exorcism gone wrong, down-on-his-luck schlub Stanley finds he's retained all of the demon's supernatural powers and positions himself as the leader of an insane worldwide cult—only to find himself pissing off the demons of hell who are hot on his heels for revenge.

Things in Stanley’s life are about to get a whole lot more complicated than he’s prepared for. We’ve gone past the realm of the bizarre and moved firmly into what will become a mission impossible style journey into the depths of hell. That this takes a decidedly different route than what I was expecting to see is part of the reason why this series is as much fun as it is. That Cullen manages to keep the reader on their toes, unable to predict what is going to happen next just goes to demonstrate why he continues to be among my favourite writers right now. Stanley has been using his newfound powers openly and wantonly which is causing quite the stir among the general populace and the denizens of hell and this isn’t going to bode well for Stanley and those that are around him.

I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceedingly well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter which continues to bring their ever evolving personalities to the forefront. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story the deeper and deeper we are pulled into this whole wonderful mess.

I appreciate the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. I like that we see the layers opening up new avenues while exploring previously opened avenues and what all this does is add some great layers of depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is immaculately achieved.

I like the interiors here. They flit between this dark and brooding and lighter more animated style of work. This creates an interesting dynamic and it works exceptionally well within these pages. The linework that we see is clean, crisp and sharp and with its varying weights and techniques creating the detail within the work that we see is amazingly well rendered. The creativity and imagination that we see is fantastic and it’s the little things like underarm hair or the visage of the demons that really take this to the places the story needs to go. I would like to see more backgrounds being utilised here as they do enhance and expand the moments. Still how we see the composition within the panels brings out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a spectacular eye for how colour works.

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I’m really enjoying the way that this keeps growing and evolving and how the dude who botched the exorcism is once again a player in this story. With Stanley creating a pretty solid inner circle things are about to go full throttle and I cannot wait to see how this is going to go. The writing is spectacular and the characterisation is utterly delightful while the interiors bring us a perfect blend to bring this to life.