Marked #2 (with art by Jeremy Johnson)
It may have finally happened: Brian may have finally spread himself too thin with the pile of minis he’s putting out on a constant basis. I thought this issue was a little too pat, wrapped up a little too neatly. Things start off with a recap of the last issue (Brian has always gotten this right), then our hero Mark the former demon hunter (called out of retirement in the last issue) wakes up after taking a beating from his own inner demon, which he had to unleash to defeat the other demons. The issue is a mad dash from there, with the demon killing Mark’s girlfriend in his apartment, Mark getting a train ticket to get out of town (as he understands completely that “my inner demon came to life and killed my girlfriend” wouldn’t fly with the cops), and the demon confronting Mark at the train station. I’m still having trouble putting my finger on exactly what it was that felt… less in this issue than in the rest of Brian’s work. The ending was very neat, sure, especially when you consider how much trouble Mark knew it would be to release his demon and the relative ease with which their fight went (not to give anything away or anything, even though I kind of just did. Dammit).  With his consistent record of quality he’s earned the benefit of the doubt from me, so I’m guessing this inner demon thing will get explained more fully in future issues, or maybe he’ll just ditch this series entirely and focus on the half dozen other series he writes. Still, there’s some great artwork by Jeremy on these tiny pages, and the story all by itself was engaging. There was just something a little bit lacking. Yes, I know that as a reviewer I’m supposed to be able to pinpoint exactly what that is. Maybe Brian’s desire to have all the issues be at least mildly self-contained, which caused the fight to wrap up too quickly? That’s a noble goal, to keep everything satisfying if a person only buys one issue. Ack, I give up. There’s also the possibility that something in my brain wasn’t firing properly today; keep in mind that’s always a possibility with these reviews. $1
