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Reviewed by Michael Aronson “In the frontier of the American West, a veil of evil threatens to engulf humanity. Servants of the fallen archangel Temozarela are paving the way for their dark lord’s resurrection. One man stands in the way of the apocalypse – Ivan Isaacs – a fallen priest who sold his soul to the devil Belial for the power to fight evil. Armed with a wicked blade and silver bullets, Ivan will give the heretics a baptism of blood in his pilgrimage for humanity’s redemption.” And so Priest kicks off a bloodbath of the Wild Undead West, or perhaps more accurately, Cowboys and Zombies. That’s Priest in a nutshell. Going past the pretty but superfluous painted cover, what immediately stands out about Priest is Hyung’s art. The closest comparison I can make is the work of Ted McKeever. The characters have a very angular and intense look with backgrounds steeped in smoke and fire. If it weren’t for the drawn-out pacing, abundant action scenes and Korean sound effects, it would be hard to distinguish the art as manga/manhwa in origin. That’s neither a criticism nor a recommendation, but it’s certainly a fresh change of pace to get something wholly different and pretty unique. There story thus far amounts to little more than the introduction to the titular priest in a gunfight with bandits and zombies. Ivan is all rage and grit with a secret or two under his belt. He’s not very far removed from vicious one-note characters like the Punisher, but then this kind of character isn’t too common in eastern comics. I could do without his quoting scripture before every massive beatdown, but I’m intrigued by him so far. This first volume works more as an introduction to the world of Priest than the start of a complex saga. There are indeed seeds that will be developed in subsequent volumes, and hopefully they’ll amount to more than a locomotive massacre. Think you could have written a better review of Priest v1? Write us and we'll probably let you give it a shot! --EiC PC |
10 March 2010
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