Comic Review: Sons of the Devil #1

(I tend to read every #1 issue that comes out from Image Comics. Are they all good? Well, let's find out.)

Reading this comic gave me a feeling that was distinctly like when I read Low for the first time. That's not because of any similarity when it comes to content, style, or anything tangible in the comic itself. In both these books, I read it having no idea what was going on in the story, just kind of following a series of events as they went along. Then, when I get to the end, there's a letter from the author, in which they explain the inspiration for the story and the premise, at which point my reaction is both "Now it makes sense" and "Why the hell didn't you put that in the book?"

The inspiration that Brian Buccellato took was from stories of cults: Jonestown, the Branch Davidians, and Charles Manson are mentioned specifically, but special emphasis was given to Jonestown and running into a picture of babies that were born in Jonestown. Now that you know that, the comic will make a lot more sense, and while I still think it should have been more explicit in the book, knowing that makes it much more interesting than it was on the first read.

We follow Travis, who it looks like was from one of those cults, never having a family and, despite being about 30, never really maturing past being a teenager. He has all sorts of anger management and self-control problems, but even with his background, once you know it, he still comes off as a bit of an asshole more than anything.

Like so many first issues, this one ends on a cliffhanger, setting up the next part of the story in such a way that I'm not entirely sure I know the premise of the story from what I've read here. I mean, I know the background of the main character (again, not from the story itself, but from a note by the author in the back), but I don't really know much else about it, and there's a suggestion from the last panel that it's about to dive even deeper into that idea. There are some other characters that could be interesting, but again we barely see anything of them.

In the end, I guess that I liked this first issue, but I'm very cautious about whether or not I want more from it. At this point, it's likely one that I'll look at when I see it at the store before deciding if I'm going to buy it, since I don't know if there's going to be payoffs to make it worth it to follow this series further.