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Review: Evil Ernie: GodEater #1

Let’s start by saying what an interesting cover for a comic. A classic Creation of Adam painting but done in Lucio Parillo’s own twist. Rather than Adam, we have a human with an ominous demon face which happens to be the main character Ernie. Justin Jordan starts his story off with a family terrorized by a father who is abusive and basically pure evil. The daughter, Amberlee, protects her brother from a beating by taking a beating herself, in which she then appears as an angel. Amberlee ascends to the skies saying she now knows what she is meant to do. We then meet what is presumed as the main character of this dark story. He is a man who seems to be possessed by some demonic spirit with one thing on his mind, chaos. Part of this characters apparel is a button with a face that just so happens to talk to him. This button seems to be evil, telling Ernie, our main character, to perform acts of violence. He also seems to be a voice of reason when our character comes into contact with a group of people who have been looking for him. A wild brawl ensues with Ernie summoning the dead to take on the group attacking him. The group attacking him seems to be minions for something else that is powerful. The character development is a bit… well lacking. First off we were introduced to a family whom the daughter, Amberlee, turned into an angel then we didn’t see her till the end of the issue. Where did she go; how/why is she an angel; what is she meant to do? Although it was rushed and not well explained, I will say I love the concept that there are angels and demons on earth that seem to be EEGod-01-Cov-A-Parillopreparing for something big to happen. Perhaps Ernie is a pivotal character for either side to beat the other.

Ernie himself is a very dark, ominous character. He has a desire to wreak havoc in any way he can, whether it be killing, or running people off the road. With powers ranging from, summoning the dead, talking to a button, to shooting lightning bolts out of his hands. Clearly Ernie has immense power that is sought after since he is being attacked by a group whose goal is to devour him to claim his power for their master. AmberLee seems to be a savior of sorts, someone likely to play a crucial role in the development of Ernie’s character and possibly even powers in future issues.

Dialogue fits the art well. It was gritty and dark with humor. Justin Jordan managed to fit various moments of different emotions within this issue. The button that Ernie wears is almost sarcastic while also having a serious side to him. Ernie himself was just dark, a one mask kind of guy. The majority of the dialogue came from Ernie and his button, without causing the art to be covered. I do wish there was a bit more information given about each character, but character development may come a bit later in the series. The flow of panels wasn’t too confusing, there were a few moments where I had to make sure I was reading the correct speech bubble though. Overall it is a quick read with good flow even from page to page.

The art was a blurry textured style. There were many layers to the art but the blurriness seemed to take away the moment from some panels. There are a few parts where stopping to really look at the art had to happen just to try to grasp what it was that was being drawn. I understand that the story is dark but blurry art took a lot out of the flow of the story for me. Besides those few moments I was overall impressed with the artwork that Colton Worley did for this issue. He captured a demonic like style and each character really shined with detail. I particularly like the art for Ernie, you can see ribs, the coloring of his body, the way he glows, he just screams demon in every way possible. The art flowed very well with the dialogue as well, when it was meant to be evil the characters looked and spoke in an evil manner. You could really sense the emotion in each scene.

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Evil Ernie: GodEater #1
Writer: Justin Jordan
Artist: Colton Worley
Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
Price: $4.99
Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital

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