YOUR INDY WEEKLY: heaven/HELL

[MattBrady]

by Ryan McLelland

heaven/HELL #1 & 2
Armoured Venus Press - $2.95 each
Written by: J. Alan Shelton and Jilly Smith
Art by: J.C. Grande
Website: http://www.armouredvenus.com

RATING: 4 stars (of 4)

I’m usually of the mindset that making a comic book about religion is probably a pretty hard sell. I think if Kevin Smith wrote a Dogma sequel in comic book form I’d pretty much be there from day one but other then that I’d say that most other books having to deal with religion I’d avoid. Well I’m very glad I didn’t take this callous attitude with J. Alan Shelton and Jilly Smith’s heaven/HELL series which captures perfectly how an upper level angel might actually feel should they come to Earth.

Mathius is an angel sent down from heaven to retrieve a missing halo which is currently the possession of some homeless guy that found it on the street. Mathius is OLD SCHOOL. He comes down to Earth and still has on Gladiator garb with a sword and has a very child like innocence to the way the world is in the Y2K era. Luckily he has Delia, a hottie angel who has been ‘on leave’ for the past three hundred years enjoying big city life. Mathius goes to Delia hoping that she can be his guide in the big city and she agrees, thinking she has nothing better to do and knowing full well it will be a hoot.

However the bad guys are in play as well. Lucifer also resides in the city spending his days trimming banzai trees and enjoying city life to the max. One of his former lieutenants, a young buck named Serius Severm, shows up wondering if Lucifer is going after the halo and if he assigned anyone to it. Lucifer has not, he seems rather ho-hum about it, making me believe that the quite happy evil-man is pretty content with his life and how life is going on around him. He assigns Severm the task which pleases the demon to no end.

So the race is on to find the missing halo. However for those non-religious types who might feel that having a bit of religious background might ‘harm their reading’, heaven/HELL is a fun read which makes the religion part of the story, not the story. The book is all about its characters, primarily the very fun, totally hot green-eyed vixen Delia who introduces Mathius to the very fun living of city life while he’s on his mission to retrieve said halo. For those who like their religion and find that comics and religion might not mix well, there is nothing blasphemous here that will cause you to go out and burn every copy of the book you can find. Heaven/HELL does little to offend and merely uses angels and demons as the backbone for a really fun story. Of course, if you’re burning copies of Harry Potter from your local library because it uses witchcraft this book might not be for you, but then again most comic books probably aren’t as well.



The story is so extremely well written by J. Alan Shelton and Jilly Smith that it feels as if they’ve been writing comic books forever. No dialogue ever feels forced, the story is extremely well paced, and there’s so much fun in the book it makes you want to reread the comic once you’ve just finished it. Artist J.C. Grande has a nice style that is a slight mixture of Mike Oeming and Manga, but his art is great on the eyes and perfect for telling this story. As this is an ongoing series I can’t wait to see where this incredible book is going. One of the best books of this year, heaven/HELL is truly the one comic others will have to look at to beat.

Have a comic for Ryan to review? E-mail him at: rdmclelland@hotmail.com

[stones throw]

"Captures perfectly how an upper level angel might actually feel should they come to Earth". LOL

[smitch]

Originally Posted by stones throw

"Captures perfectly how an upper level angel might actually feel should they come to Earth". LOL

Yeah, last time it happened, he wasn't too happy and is trying to take us all to Hell with him.

[OM]

...Yeah, well, at least he got Jerry Falwell back

[idkidd]

Is this an ongoing series? Diamond order code?