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The Devil’s Grin #2

I’m going to type a lot of words now, as is my way, but to be very clear about this comic right off the bat: I’m fully on board for this journey. Any quibbles (and I honestly can’t think of any at the moment), any doubts, I’m still fully invested in seeing where Alex takes this thing. To anybody who’s jumping into my ramblings with the review for #2, that’s ridiculous, but things ended up previously with the flushed fetus Robert (talking from birth, mind you) surviving his experience in the sewer and wandering out into the world. This one picks up in 1974, about 26 years after the first issue, and Robert is a full grown dude. What was his life like? How did he make it this far? Maybe that’ll get dealt with later in the series, or maybe it’s irrelevant and I shouldn’t worry about it. Alex has a fantastic (and surprisingly thorough, considering how complex the story has been so far) synopsis on the inside front cover, for new readers and anybody who might have forgotten bits of it, which is something I’m always happy to see. We’re reintroduced to Robert, who’s a broke poet, and the audience at this particular poetry reading is pretty sick of him always bringing things back to the sewer. Which is a succinct, hilarious way to let the reader know that he’s scarred for life from an experience that would definitely do that to a person. We meet Robert’s neighbor Dandelion, who is also haunted by that grinning devil, not that either of them know that about the other person. We spend a good chunk of the issue with her, so I’m guessing that’ll be something else that comes in to play more later. We see that his mother is still around, and the oddball cartoonist neighbor is still doing his thing, but in a more sinister fashion, which the back cover (actually the end of the story; Alex used ALL the pages for this 66 page behemoth of a tale) lays out explicitly. Oh, and there’s the killer, or maybe it’s a killer. And Robert’s girlfriend, and Dandelion’s therapist and abandoned car, and that wandering cop… lots of ingredients bubbling around. It’s a thoroughly engaging story, and the only thing that has me even slightly hesitating before buying the next available issues is the eternal “do I just wait for the collected edition to come out” conundrum. If you see a review for #3 shortly, I guess that answers that… $14

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The Devil’s Grin #1

What an absolute fucking journey this comic is. Oh hi, do you have no idea what you’re in for here? This is the first issue (out of four, at least as of early 2024) of this series, and the early issues are getting pretty rare, so if you’d like to get in on this ride, Domino Books still has copies available as of this writing. I went into this totally blind, and I think the only comic I’ve seen from Alex before this was Dog Biscuits (from Fantagraphics, it was incredible). This one starts in 1948 with a woman dining alone at an outdoor cafe. We see bits of her history and interests throughout this meal, along with an overheard conversation on top of her experiences. She heads home, has an embarrassing (to her) encounter with a bum on the street, and arrives home to a letter from her fiance breaking up with her. We also meet a couple of her neighbors and learn about her interest in becoming a great artist, so at this point I was pretty sure I had a sense of where the story was heading with a whole cast of characters coming together. I was completely wrong, because after a frenzied all night painting session, she ends up on the toilet with an early Chester Brown-esque page full of struggling. Readers of Ed the Happy Clown, you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, she ends up giving birth to a tiny… baby? It’s talking right away, but let’s go with baby. She doesn’t want the shame of having to explain it and figures it would ruin her life, so she flushes it away. At this point the real story starts up, probably, unless it shifts back to the lady in the next issue. But the rest of this one is the adventure of that baby and yes, you can go ahead an assume it survives. There are the flying creatures of the sewers, a lactating rat, a cage, a desperate rescue attempt, and an accidental murder, but I’ve said too much. This book is gorgeous (it took a supreme act of will to not also include that amazing back cover as a sample image), the story is compelling and all kinds of weird, and I have absolutely no idea where he’s going with all this. So yes, I’m glad that I got the first two issues at the same time, and I’ll be getting the next two as soon as I can. $12