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Billy Demon Slayer: Complete Series 2 Collection

It’s a little hilarious to go back through my old reviews of this series, note how many times I said I was going to go back and read the series in a chunk (as I reviewed the issues more or less when they came out and forgot a lot of the details between issues), and then somehow I never reviewed the final issue. Or I never got it? Nah, I’ll go ahead and blame me for dropping the ball on that one. Anyway, I was right: this series makes a whole lot more sense when it’s read all at once. Which is the nature of serialized comics, and most people don’t read as many comics as somebody who reviews them does, meaning that they have an easier time keeping all the little details straight. Anyway! For those of you who haven’t read this series (or those reviews when they came out a few years ago), this is the second series, meaning things start off with a recap of what happened in the first series. It was pretty comprehensive, and the only thing I really felt like I was missing out on was some of the more obscure cameos. In this complete volume we start off with a flashback to a couple of swords that are obviously going to be crucial later on, then jump back into life that has more or less gone back to normal after the events of the first series. But things don’t stay normal, as we get a killer hamster to start off with and it’s quickly followed by a mysterious (and, in a hilarious recurring gag, obviously stinky) fog envelops the town and turns almost everybody evil. We even lose our hero for a bit there in the middle, although I’m not going to spell out what that means exactly. Things get pretty dark in this series, but there are quips throughout and (from the afterward) it’s clear that the first series was much more lighthearted and this one ended up darker because that’s just where the story was naturally headed. Buffy and the Evil Dead series were obvious influences, but those are two pretty great influences to have. If you enjoyed those two universes, you’re going to find plenty to love in here. My only complaint is that the two friends of Billy were barely characters at all, which lessened some of their struggles, but again that’s most likely on me for not reading the first series. Other than that I pretty much loved this book. $25

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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