Fryer, Hayden – Billy Demon Slayer #6

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Billy: Demon Slayer S2 #6

Move along, nothing to see here. Granted, you could say that about a lot of my reviews, but this is the second to last issue of this series, and I’m going to reread the whole thing before posting a review for the finale. That should be significantly more coherent than this one, as it’ll all be fresh in my head and this is just a review for the sixth issue of a series I started reviewing about a year ago. Maybe my annoyance at having no clue what happened in the first series will make more sense when it’s all read at once, maybe my theories about various shortcomings will look silly when I can see the master plan all laid out. But hey, you pay me the big bucks (in that I’m not paid at all) to ramble, so ramble I must. This issue features Billy getting all set for his assault on hell, and if you’ve reached a critical threshold for “Army of Darkness” references in comics, I recommend shutting your eyes for a few pages in the middle. Anyway, Billy heads to hell, his friends start to succumb to this rolling darkness, and the mildly vague evil master plan keeps on going. One thing that didn’t make a bit of sense to me was Billy vs. the undead hordes. Or at least I think that’s what it was, as even though Billy spent a good chunk of the first half of the book gearing up for this fight, there wasn’t a single panel of him doing anybody any sort of violence. The end result made it look like all the bad guys just wandered off. Again, maybe the series as a whole will make that a bit clearer, but it sure isn’t as I’m sitting here right now. Once again I loved the bit in the back that explained what happened to a few characters that wandered in during the issue, and that’s been a consistently bright spot in the series. I’m really looking forward to reading this all in a chunk, as it seems like exactly the sort of thing that I would really love, but trying to figure out WHY that hasn’t been the case has been a real chore. It might all come together for the finale, or I might figure out that I was wrong when it’s all read in a chunk. The optimist in me prefers to stick to those options and leave the darker ones for later. $3.50