Billy: Demon Slayer #1

Posted: Tuesday, June 11, 2002
By: Darren Schroeder

Cover of Billy: Demon Slayer #1 Creator(s): Hayden Fryer
Publishers: Siberian Productions (Self Published)
From: Australia
Price: $2:50 (AUST)

Billy and his mum go shopping. While they are minding their own business getting the necessities of life, the Skeleton Aid and a bunch of lost souls storm the building in search of Billy. It seems he is the anti-christ, and the devil wants a word with him. This turn of events is a surprise to Billy and his mum, who ends up a little bit dead as the lost souls try to persuade Billy to follow their invitation.

Things move quickly in this comic, with no build up and little in the way of explanations. Not soon after we meet Billy he is swinging a couple of chain saws in order to keep the bad guys at bay. Hayden tries for snappy dialogue, but for the most part it falls flat.

The drawings are reasonably well executed, with the panels being nice and clear with well executed line work and interesting use of solid black to show the army of lost souls engulfing things. As I'm currently trying to perfect my own efforts at drawing hands I paid close attention to Hayden's efforts, which are not too bad. The hands of his characters are clear and well defined, though they occasional appear slightly too large in relation to the scale of the bodies. His word balloons and lettering are especially crisp and clear, my guess is that he has used a computer to get such a nice effect.

This is quite a successful comic in terms of the visuals, easy to follow and with a mix of layout styles. The script is straight forward as well as amusing, but it lacks certain spark.

In a Word: Spartan.



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