By Chris Tresson

I’m not one for biblical shite. Never been a religious guy and quite frankly, I try to avoid any sort of religious stuff at all costs… But I have been reading Image Comics’ The Goddamned. It’s back from whatever happened to it and I haven’t got a fucking clue where it left off, so I’m just going to stumble through this and pretend like I remember what happened before… Let’s see what Jason Aaron and R.M. Guéra have been up to.

Okay, so I wasn’t all that impressed with the issue. It’s the conclusion to the first arc (which is fucking weird because I’ve had to wait six months to read it at this point.) There’s not a lot of stuff going on in the issue. If I could spoil it by telling you anything about it, I don’t know what I would write because there’s nothing that jumps out at me... After reading it, I’m actually more interested in what happened outside of the book to delay it so much rather than what happened in this final issue of the arc. I’m guessing it was the art that delayed it because the script from Jason Aaron is pretty weak by his standards… That or Jason Aaron was writing one of his many other books and fell behind on this one. Fair play if that’s the case. I’d place this story at the bottom of my priorities, too. What I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t read well, it reads like the arc needed to be finished.

One thing I will point out/comment on is that there’s a character in here whose dialogue makes them sound like they’ve been hit on the head with a hammer repeatedly... Have fun trying to figure out which one it is.

R.M. Guéra’s art is nice for the most part, but there are pages where it’s lacking the quality from previous issues. There are some nice panels in here but I’d have to say my favorite thing about the whole issue is Guila Brusco’s coloring. Brusco has done a fantastic job throughout the first arc on the colors, I don’t think I’ve seen anything worth picking at color-wise, and it’s the one thing that I can recall from previous issues that I’ve enjoyed.

I think this one has cracked me, though. I wasn’t mad keen on it in the first place but after this issue, I think I’m done with it. I thought it’d be a good book with the creative team it has on it but I think the subject matter and my overall lack of interest in seeing bible stories told from a different perspective has taken me out of wanting to read anymore…

The delay in the storytelling probably has something to do with it, too, to be honest. I have no desire to wait around for long periods of time to read another arc. In the back of the book it says the next arc is going to start in 2017... There’s no solicitation for issue six yet, which means the next arc is fucking time away. I read a lot of books as it is, there’s always new ones coming out and by the time the next issue rolls around, I will have completely forgotten about this book.

Score: 2/5

The Goddamned #5
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: R.M. Guéra
Colorist: Guila Brusco
Publisher: Image Comics