Tuesday, December 28, 2021

It so Totally Ends Badly

 

Back in 2019, I “met” Barry Southworth when I reviewed a comic he co-wrote with Louise Cochran-Mason for Here-After Press entitled, Kingston Tales. That comic (which I reviewed for Jim Main’s Fandom World vol. 2 #1) was the story about a character named Zoey, her roommate, Lucinda, and the ordinary, punk rock world in which they lived. It was an entertaining comic, and we rather enjoyed it.

Flash forward to this year (2020) and Barry has a new comic out, It Ends Badly; a comic spotlighting a couple who (apparently) have some sort of supra-natural powers which are never actually explained in this first issue (not even a big deal, as it turns out, as the story being told is really quite engaging.

Briefly, this issue contains five stories: a main tale, as well as two back-ups. The first story is the eponymously titled Rachael, Albert & Nic. As the tale opens, Albert has been burnt nearly to a crisp (after apparently scamming someone out of his money) but is — oddly enough — still walking around. Rachael (his friend) has determined to get even with the guy who shot and set Albert on fire (Nic), so she gets all tarted up and heads down to the seedier part of town to search for Nic.

Well, find him she does, and then, well, it all goes badly. But you knew that.

The final four stories are comprised of a two-pager and a trio of three single-page stories entitled The Many Faces of Satan, High, Sorrow, and Somebody. Of the three, the first is interesting as it “identifies” several incarnations of Satan (from the Catholic Church, Rock ‘n’ roll, politics); High deals with a couple who have spend their lives “self-medicating”; Both Sorrow and Someone each deal with personhood.

The issue does show promise, especially with the first tale as it indicates that there is some seriously twisty background going on with the storyline, and that honestly intrigues us, and we’d be interested in seeing more issues. Needless to say, the back-up stories were also fascinating, and more of these would also be appreciated.

If you are interested in acquiring a copy of your own, you can reach out to him and send him $4.00 at southworthb01@gmail.com.

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