I’m really not much for religion in comics or stories. It’s almost always heavy handed or agenda driven. When that’s the case it’s rare that the story is entertaining or even one that I would deem worth reading. Prince of Pieces is heavy handed and best. I’m not really sure what the point of the story is other than to point out that everyone is a sinner and that if Jesus were to come back tomorrow we’d all be fucked, but that seemed to be the point of Prince of Pieces.
The basic gist is that Jesus inhabits a statue of himself on the cross and becomes a zombie. We have a bunch of supporting characters that bite the dust or play a role in the plot progressing. Our main character is a dude that lives with his overly religious mother and repairs stuff for her. I'm also not even sure if it's his mother, do you call your mother by her first name? I don’t know why he’s our main character, but his path crosses Zombie Jesus' path.
That’s actually when the story stops following its own rules. This is basically a horror story with a lot of religious overtones, but being a horror story it has rules to follow. The only rule this story has is that basically Zombie Jesus runs into “Christians” that are actually sinners and kills them on site… mostly by eating them. Until he runs into the main guy and his girlfriend and instead kidnaps her. Some Evil Dead shit goes down and our main character gets a nail gun for a hand… no compressor needed apparently.
This book could have been fun. Series like Holy F*ck and its sequel Holy F*cked are proof of that. With Prince of Pieces the story is too focused on pointing out terrible people pretending to be good people because of religon. Which is basically just saying that these people are hypocrites. Which is fine. That’s the writer’s opinion and they can share that and mold a story around it. I just don’t think it needed to be seventy plus pages of that message over and over again. Once is an introduction, twice is making a point and anything after three is overkill.
On top of that, our main character isn’t really likable. He has no reason to be involved in the story with Jesus expect for a really forced angle involving his mother person. Otherwise he doesn’t do anything. He’s just there and there’s no character development for him. He’s just going to strap on a nail gun and stop Zombie Jesus. Also, no idea why he’s a zombie. He was a statue, then he’s a zombie… what?
The art is the only decent thing, but it’s not the greatest either. The character’s faces in particular have a lot of extra detail. This is an attempt at realism I suppose, but instead it just makes everyone look pretty damn ugly. All of the horror and gore is just aftermath, meaning we never see anything go down. It’s just the results which is very disappointing. I mean, it’s Zombie Jesus… show some gore already. You’ve gone this far, why not go for broke? I mean right? Zombie Jesus. You're going to offend people so why not show actual horror and gore while it's happening instead of the Hollywood effect of showing the aftermath. That was one of the most frustrating parts.
Overall, I wish this book was funny. It attempts that by mocking every popularly known aspect of religion, but that’s really not enough to make me laugh. I suppose if you really had it out for religion then this book might appeal to you, but I think the story is so transparent that you might not care. You know what’s going to happen every step of the way and it’s really not worth the journey.
Score: 2/5
Prince of Pieces Writer: Sam Miserendino Artist: Colin Blaton Publisher: Creator’s Edge Price: $12.99 Format: OGN; Print Website