Despite a rather overwhelming love and appreciation for the character of Deadman, he has never been able to capture the interests of the many in an ongoing series. The reason for that is because he was never given one, but the more you think about it, perhaps it wasn’t the greatest idea to give Deadman one. Let me explain. Deadman’s character can develop and change, but when it comes down to it, his whole life is simply complaining about how he is dead, but still living in the real world as a ghost. Apart from all of that, you may get stories uncovering more information about Boston Brand/Deadman, but when it comes down to it, Deadman will always be dead, and it doesn’t take long for a writer to run out of ideas for the character. That is just my opinion, but something that we can all agree on is that Deadman can work perfectly in a miniseries. This means that the story is contained within just a few issues, resulting in what should be a separate, but interesting and memorable story that has a start and an end. This is where Mike Baron and Kelley Jones come in as after their Deadman stories in Action Comics Weekly (issues 618-621 and 623-626) (read my review of the story here) must have struck a chord somewhere in the corporate machine of DC Comics as the company decided to give them a Deadman miniseries! And then another one!
While Deadman: Love After Death 1-2 was released from December 1989 to January 1990, Deadman: Exorcism 1-2 was released two years after in 1992, with part one in October and part two in December. Like before, the stories are all written by Mike Baron, but now, the art is completely pencilled and inked by Kelley Jones. Plus, it is worth pointing out that both of these miniseries were published under the “Suggested for Mature Readers” line. The reason for that will become clear once you start reading the stories. Lastly, I have read both of these miniseries in the Deadman by Kelley Jones trade paperback, but as opposed to the Action Comics stories, both of these series have
been reprinted beforehand.
Love After Death --- Written by Mike Baron with art by Kelley Jones
THE PLOT
While possessing a man’s body, Deadman reads about the ghost of a circus aerialist haunting a house from a magazine. Deadman, wondering if the dead aerialist is like him, heads into the woods to find the house, which he succeeds in. After noticing the caretaker of the old house locking up for the night, Deadman enters the house and finds lots of circus posters and merchandise. However, not long after, he finds the ghost of the aerialist in the gymnasium of the house. The ghost of the aerialist, named Ann Wallechinskie vanishes away from Deadman, but just seconds later, Ann confronts Deadman. At first, she speaks with Deadman, but after he tells her that he was part of the circus just like herself, she freaks out and vanishes. Then (just to add to the strangeness), a decaying man appears to Deadman, telling him that he must join the circus, or leave. The decaying man then tries to vanish away, but before he can, he is possessed by Deadman. However, this plan doesn’t work as Deadman is thrown out of the decaying body, resulting in the decayed man escaping. Deadman gets up after this and finds Ann along with the other members of the circus, who all seem incredibly hostile towards Ann, who tells Deadman that she wants to leave. Later, Deadman and Ann practise trapeze acts together and during that time, the two realise that they have fallen in love. Although they share a romantic moment together, they are stopped when they hear a loud voice call Ann’s name. This causes Ann to freak out and cry. Despite Deadman trying to persuade her to stay, Ann ignores it and tells Deadman that a comatose body nearby can be used by Deadman so he can help her. Deadman accepts this and Ann leaves to go to her caller. Sometime later, Deadman visits the hospital and finds the comatose body of an Olympian, with his wife, Connie, watching over her husband, who the doctors believe has no hope of surviving. However, Deadman possesses the body of Jack (the man in the coma) and wakes him up from his coma. After leaving the hospital as he has seemingly completely recovered, Deadman sleeps with Connie. Afterwards, Deadman tells Connie that in his dream from the coma, he experienced events taking place in the abandoned house in the forest. Although she is sceptical, she decides to go with Deadman the next morning. Before then though, Deadman and Connie are attacked by an ugly beast, who tells Deadman that, well, I'll let him explain...
After they both just about recover from that and another attack near the house, Deadman and Connie arrive at the house. At first, they are prevented from going in by the caretaker, but once Deadman gives him money, the caretaker lets the two of them in. But, the first thing the three of them see is a rotting body of a werewolf in the middle of a pentagram. The rotting creature then shouts out and warns Deadman to leave the house. Deadman then begins looking for Connie, who ran away from the werewolf. After finding another note telling Deadman that he will suffer, he hears a scream from Connie, who tells Deadman that she wants to leave. Ignoring her pleas, Deadman looks around the house some more and finds other members of the circus, all of whom are mentally twisted so to speak. Deadman then heads out of the house and finds that Connie’s car has been crushed. Deadman then screams out for Rama Kushna before leaving Jack’s body back in its coma state. This leaves Jack’s body to be almost eaten by circus members, but luckily, Deadman saves Jack by possessing his body again and running away. While Deadman is lost in the forest surrounding the house, he meets a mystery ghost of the circus, who tells Deadman to meet with Brazia, who is feared by Ann. The ghost leaves Deadman by telling him not to be late.
Deadman remembers that as a child, he and his brother, Cleveland, went to the fortune teller at a circus, where Deadman as a child learnt that his lifeline stops and starts again. The fortune teller tells the young Boston that he must stay away from the circus forever. Back in the present, Deadman is afraid of heading to a circus beyond the house to find Ann, but he builds up the courage and goes on his way. During his journey, he fights against more strange beastly creatures and meets another member of the circus, who has a gigantic snake at the end of one of her arms. However, she speaks about how Byron, the husband of Ann, also abused her and that she wants Deadman to succeed in defeating Byron. But, instead of helping Deadman, the woman is killed by her own snake, leaving Deadman to move on. Some time later, Deadman finds the circus and the ghost who told him to meet Brazia earlier. The mysterious man breaks an egg open, with appears to leak a foetus. The man then eats the foetus and tells Deadman that that was the snake woman from earlier and that he has absorbed the souls of the dead people from the circus. Although Deadman asks about where Connie is, he isn’t given an answer as the mysterious man throws him out of the circus tent. Deadman then ends up in the core of the circus, where he meets the fortune teller he met as a child. The fortune teller then speaks about how Deadman is stuck in a crisis as he is in love with Ann, but his body, Jack, is in love with Connie. The fortune teller then continues by telling Deadman that Brazia lives in a steam engine as the original engineer of the engine was thrown in the furnace to die by Byron, creating Brazia in the first place. However, the fortune teller is then killed by the mysterious man and he tells Deadman to leave the circus. After leaving, Deadman is attacked by more grizzly creatures and hides in one of the train carriages. In there, he finds Connie tied up. Before she can be rescued though, the creature from outside breaks in. Deadman violently attacks the creature using a mallet and kills it. Although Connie wants to leave straight away, Deadman tells her that more creatures are outside and that the two of them must find shelter. Eventually, the two of them find a safe house to stay in, giving Deadman the perfect opportunity to leave Jack’s body asleep with Connie. Meanwhile, Deadman heads to the steam engine, but on his way, he finds Ann, who seems to be a bit jealous of Connie, but Deadman reassures her that Ann was the reason he came back. On the way to the engine, Deadman is introduced to a different circus by Ann, featuring more friendlier characters. After meeting them, Deadman asks Ann where Byron stays. She tells Deadman that he stays in the car behind the engine. Deadman then heads back to Jack’s body and possesses him, leaving Connie to sleep. Deadman heads to the train car, where he meets Byron, who laughs at the fact that Deadman trusts Ann as he claims that she has slept with everyone. Byron then displays his powers by splitting Deadman away from Jack, but the two of their bodies are stuck together. Byron then begins attacking Deadman and Jack with a whip, but not long after, the two of them become sick of it and attack Byron. A fight between the two begins, with Byron getting his ar*e kicked. However, Byron mentions the danger that is Brazia, leaving Deadman to try and fight her as well. Deadman, after being reassured by Ann that Jack and Connie will be alright (even though he is currently in Jack’s body), heads to the steam engine, where he finds the burnt fire creature named Brazia, who tries to convince Deadman to kill himself. Although this nearly works, Deadman is saved by Ann, who is attacked by Brazia. Deadman then takes this opportunity to throw a match at Brazia and then filling the (continues after image)
engine up with coal. In a final effort, Deadman controls the train through the house in the woods, destroying it. After leaving Jack’s body, Deadman is forced to say goodbye to Ann as her spirit is free. This causes Deadman to complain about how he is still alive, but in her last act, Ann, releases Jack from his coma. This makes Deadman even more angry as now, he is completely alone and still dead.
MY THOUGHTS
Starting with the main plot of this miniseries, I think that it has a very good premise and quite frankly, it is one that I was surprised that the concept was never published before. I understand that Deadman as a comic story wasn’t particularly common, but this story just makes sense for an obvious idea. While I do have my criticisms with the story, just starting with the highlights, I think that Deadman is handled brilliantly here, and we really do get an interesting perspective from him. Instead of getting all the usual, with Deadman constantly moaning about Rama Kushna, we see different emotions here, one which is hope and even happiness. Although us as the readers obviously know that by the end, things will be back to how they were, it is incredibly interesting to see how he acts as a character in love. Speaking of which, I don’t find the love between Deadman and Ann to be unjustified, mainly for the fact that: A) they are both dead, but ghost-like. B) they were both part of a circus and C) they both have an aspect of tragedy behind their characters. While I don’t feel like Ann featured in the story as much as she probably should of, her presence with Deadman makes a lot of sense and the scenes they do feature in are usually memorable. One featured inclusion of the story which I thought added another perspective was the characters of Jack and Connie, two regular human begins, one of which got into a horrible accident, resulting in being in a coma for the rest of his life. This instantly added tragedy and horror to the story and although we know that Deadman will possess him to use his body, these characters feel instantly important. What Baron also does cleverly throughout the story is having their thoughts displayed from time to time, specifically Connie, who is the only one in the story who is confused by everything going on around her. In a lot of ways, she is the character that we should be following from her viewpoint as everyone else, such as Deadman, Ann and everyone in the circus, is all involved or a part of what is going on, while Connie just wants to leave with Jack. This leads perfectly to the ending, where everything is resolved, but not really. In her last act, Ann brings Jack back from his coma, but as Deadman can’t possess Jack as he has his life back, Deadman becomes all angry and depressed that he is alone again. This ending is balanced well as while it does have its sense of sadness, with Deadman becoming all sad, wait, isn’t that what he’s normally like? Anyway, Deadman is sad, but Jack is back from his coma and they are all happy (even if I don’t get the ending with Connie seemingly biting her own finger off). Another great aspect of this story is its tone. While I’m referring to both the writing and art at the same time, I’m not talking about the story. The tone of the story is more than sinister. Everything feels eerie and constantly on edge, the perfect tone for a horror story, but I’m not putting that down to plot. Instead, Baron (with the aid of Jones’s art) adds in moments, like the pentagram werewolf scene, along with interesting dialogue, giving us the impression that the story is more horror than superhero or fantasy. Aspects like this can be seen all over the place, but definitely with the scenes in the old house and the forest, which feature some quite horrific things, which are amplified in horror by Kelley Jones. For instance, the steam engine in the train carriage feels very sinister and evil and while I do have problems surrounding the scene in terms of context, it fits the mood perfectly. Apart from all of that, a smaller part of the story that I liked was some of the information surrounding Deadman and his family when he was Boston Brand. Backstory inserts such as Boston visiting the fortune teller are told so well and memorably, that it makes the character of Deadman even more interesting. Speaking of which, like with what happened to the fortune teller, there are some fantastically gory and creepy deaths in this tale, specifically the death of the snake woman, who is killed by her snake. Great stuff.
You may have noticed that throughout the plot of the story that I wasn’t always mentioning the names of the circus people and who they were. The reason for that is that I find every single one of them dull, boring and aimless characters. The main villain, Byron, is okay, but we don’t see enough of him to really get the great sense that he is the enemy. Instead, we get a load of other characters from the circus, like the fat lady, the snake lady, the fortune teller, the clown and loads of others. But like I said, the problem with all of them is that they are all one-dimensional and as they are cardboard cut outs. Occasionally, they might try and do something to hinder Deadman’s progress, but most of the time, they feature in the story for a good five or so pages, but don’t add anything new or entertaining. The character of Brazia works due to the fact that when we hear of it, it sounds scary and when we see it, it looks scary (thanks to its tragic and evil origin), but all of the others just fail and make the story a bit of a pain in the ar*e to read. This leads me onto another issue I have with this story, which is that there is way too much padding. This story could have worked better as a simple sixty-page story, because what we were given is full of plot that is unessential and tedious. I get that Baron may have wanted to give the circus characters some background, but it just doesn’t work and we end with a large chunk of the story being good, dark, scary and entertaining, but the other half is like a kick in the balls. Looking back at what I have just written, this doesn’t look like a lot for the negatives of this story, but the problem is that the circus people feature in this story for a lot of it and pretty much none of it I like. And don’t even get me started on the circus that appears later in the story, which has the “funnier” characters in it, as in the grand scheme of things, they add f*ck all. Apart from that, there are a few other smaller problems, only really nit-picks though, like how the doctors just can let Jack out of the hospital just because he wants to go home. Also, where does the janitor of the house go, does he die? The house itself vanishes for most of the second part of the story and only really comes back at the end. The more I think about it the more problems there are with this story, even if I do think it is good overall.
As this is a horror comic more than anything else, the art by Kelley Jones is great. It meshes perfectly with the creepy script that Mike Baron wrote. As usual, Jones’s use of lighting, shadows and drama makes his art an absolute joy to look at and feel a great deal of emotion while looking at it. That being said, it isn’t his best to me, for just two reasons. Firstly, I can find the art a little unclear in parts, particularly the last page (Connie biting her finger off for some reason) and secondly, I think that Jones goes overboard with the detail quite honestly. If this story was published in black and (continues after image)
white or even in grayscale, then the art would look impressive due to the feathering, lines and crosshatching, but the story was published in colour (as it should be with DC Comics in the 1980s/90s), meaning that some of the detail can simply be applied by the colourist (in this case, Les Dorseheid). The huge quantity of lines clearly shows that a lot of effort has been put in, but I don’t think it was all necessary. That being said, the art is damn-near classic Jones and it shows how well he can draw Deadman.
Story: 7.5/10
Art: 9/10
Exorcism --- Written by Mike Baron with art by Kelley Jones
THE PLOT
One night, a young couple drive through a forest. They both end up at an old church and decide to spend the night there. However, during the night, the wife screams to the husband about how she doesn’t love him and how his life has been a failure. This causes the husband to run away, but when he does, the wife turns back to normal and faints. Deadman then leaves the body of the wife who he has been possessing, leaving her to wake up lost and confused. Some time later, the husband visits the police station to get help. On the way back to the church in a police car, the
husband, named Carl, speaks about how he and his wife, Kathy, were on their honeymoon, but once the two of them reached the old castle, the incident occurred. When Carl and the police get to the scene, they find Kathy crying about how she was left behind. Carl then tells her what happened, but she doesn’t remember it, leaving her freaked out. Meanwhile in Boston, a man named Hugh visits a doctor about his mental health and how he is having blank periods where he remembers nothing. Once Hugh begins to speak of the seriousness of what is happening to him, including the possibility that he may be unknowingly killing people, the doctor, named Joanne, gets in Madame Waxahachie (from the Action Comics Weekly story) to help Hugh. Over a meal, Hugh speaks with Joanne and Waxahachie, who wants to hypnotise Hugh to discover what is wrong with him. Hugh agrees to this and when Hugh is hypnotised later that day, Waxahachie looks around his head and finds Deadman. However, Waxahachie is thrown out of Hugh’s mind, who is then informed about Deadman by her. Waxahachie then decides to take Hugh and Joanne to Vermont to locate Deadman. On the way, Waxahachie gets out of her van to speak to some incredibly inebriated youths about directions to a church, which they gave before Waxahachie goes on her way. Once Waxahachie and her allies reach the church, Deadman notices them and follows them around the church. Knowing that something is wrong, Waxahachie gives a pendant to Hugh to wear which protects him from the supernatural. However, that plan fails as Deadman possesses a bird and steals the pendant. Meanwhile, the youths from earlier continue to drink and take drugs when they notice Hugh not too far away from them. Hugh does a rude hand gesture to the youths, angering them. They then chase Hugh, who ends up at the top of a tree. It is then revealed that Deadman was possessing Hugh and once he leaves his body, Hugh is terrified and stuck. Meanwhile, Waxahachie and Joanne discover a secret passageway in the church, causing Deadman to get angry and find the two of them. Deadman is angry that Waxahachie cannot hear him just like she used to, but she does try to communicate with Deadman, but it fails. Then, Waxahachie notices that three ghosts have appeared, which she notices are a minister, an Indian warrior and a roman soldier. Although Deadman warned that Waxahachie has released some ghosts, they quickly vanish. Joanne shifts attention back to Hugh, you know, the reason they sort of came to this church, and she and Waxahachie decide to go and look for him. Meanwhile, Hugh has fallen from the tree and died. While the youths look over his body, they are attacked by the three ghosts, who then possess the three youths. To the surprise of nobody, the three spirits have an obsession with death, and they crave it. At the same time, Deadman possesses Joanne and speaks to Waxahachie about how he is haunting a church and how he has been using Hugh’s body to beat up gay men. Deadman has come to the conclusion that the human race is sh*t and that he enjoys playing around with them. Once Deadman leaves Joanne’s body, she and Waxahachie are met with the possessed youths, who seem to have no understanding of technology, put it down to witchcraft and then lock Waxahachie and Joanne in the basement of the church. Meanwhile, Deadman finds the body of Hugh and has a break down, where he comes to the conclusion that he has become a monster and he pleads for Rama Kushna’s help. Deadman then decides to possess Hugh’s body as the blood in it is still warn enough. Meanwhile underneath the church, Waxahachie and Joanne are tortured by the three ghosts to get their confession of witchcraft. However, the ghosts are stopped when the Phantom Stranger appears from nowhere.
Although one of the ghosts recognises the Phantom Stranger, who is trying to help
Waxahachie, he is easily defeated by one of the ghosts, who then tries to kill Waxahachie again. But the ghost fails when its possessed body is murdered by the roman ghost as he believes that it isn’t right to make war on women. While the ghost looks for another host body, he runs into Deadman. The two of them fight over who should possess Hugh’s body, but the end result is that Deadman kicks out the ghost from Hugh’s body, claiming it as his. At the same time, the remaining ghost fights the roman for killing the other ghost. Not only that, but Deadman arrives in the basement and is recognised by Waxahachie as Deadman instead of Hugh. Once he notices that Hugh is dead, the Phantom Stranger appears to confront Deadman, but he quickly vanishes. Phantom Stranger then explains that Deadman’s anger has caused spirits to rise from the church to cause mischief and because of this, he requires Waxahachie’s help in saving Deadman from himself. Meanwhile, Deadman is confronted by Joanne about how he needs help. The two speak about Deadman’s origin, who he once was and why he became so angry and evil, to which Deadman puts down to a woman he once knew. Meanwhile, Phantom Stranger, Waxahachie and the roman ghost head into a cave system which is home to demons and other creatures, and it isn’t too long after they arrive that they are attacked by monsters and demons. At the same time, Joanne hears Deadman’s story about Ann (from previous miniseries) and how he believes that she used him and that he was never loved. Once Joanne disagrees with what she has heard about Ann, Deadman becomes angry and possesses Joanne’s body. Meanwhile with Phantom Stranger, more strange creatures appear and break out of eggs and plantation in the cave system. At the same time, Deadman is attacked by Hugh, whose body is possessed by the ghost from earlier. However, Deadman leaves Joanne’s body and begins fighting the ghost of the demon. Watching the fight, Joanne can’t take much more of it and grabs an axe and plunges it into the ghost’s head. This doesn’t kill him however and as he begins attacking Joanne, Deadman grabs the axe and beats the ghost to death with it. This causes Deadman to break down again and Joanne comes up with the theory that he may be schizophrenic. Deadman begins to speak about his problems and how he has had a tough life. Meanwhile with Phantom Stranger, the last alive youth from earlier is given her soul back to her body while Waxahachie assures her that Phantom Stranger will be helping the two of them escape. Back to Deadman, he is coming to terms even more that he was the cause of death of Hugh. Joanne then tells Deadman to think back to his childhood and family, where Deadman has the revelation that he once hurt his brother, Cleve, when he was a child, making him feel guilt. While Deadman begins to get angry at himself for hurting his brother once, Phantom Stranger, Waxahachie and the youth appear back in the real world. Although Phantom Stranger believes that the evil caused by Deadman is incredibly strong, Deadman himself comes up with the solution of using some of his power to destroy the main creature that is creating the evil thanks to Deadman, known as Chief Nebagamon. Deadman activates his power and destroys the creature, causing a huge explosion, but luckily, Waxahachie and everyone else escapes just in time. Deadman appears in complete blackness to Rama Kushna, who promises to make him whole again. Days later, Deadman possesses the body of a (continues after image)
criminal (who he promises to send to the police station afterwards) to take a therapy session with Joanne. Afterwards, Deadman visits Waxahachie and explains that Rama Kushna has given him a new purpose and mission.
MY THOUGHTS
To be honest with you, my thoughts on the plot of this story is actually pretty similar to the previous story because looking at the two of them, they are quite similar. We see Deadman depressed in both of these, there is a character that changes Deadman, like Ann in the previous story or Joanne, the villains of the stories are focused around ghosts and just like the previous story, most side characters are pointless and crap, but before we get onto all of that, lets start positive. First of all, while he isn’t written as well here as he was previously, Deadman does have some very good moments in the story, both for comedic reasons and interesting character inputs. At the very beginning, there is something funny, but incredibly twisted about Deadman as he possesses a woman to scare away her boyfriend. While this does display Deadman as a little bit of a clown, you can really sense and see the evilness in his character which is now present. This change in Deadman really conveys to us different thoughts, such as whether Deadman would now willingly kill people (which he does later to a ghost) or torture them for fun. We then learn that Deadman is really the villain of the story, a progression in the story which only works due to Deadman’s dramatic change. It is then when we are reintroduced to Madame Waxahachie, a character who I thought that Baron wrote excellently in the Action Comics Weekly story and here, she still doesn’t take any b*llsh*t. She is an example of a good supporting character here, mainly for the fact that she can funnily enough be used in action scenes and fights, something pretty much every character feels useless at here in the story, apart from Deadman himself obviously. That being said however, there is another character who appears in this and appears to be an absolutely brilliantly shot with a gun (you wouldn’t have guessed it) and that is the Phantom Stranger. As a fan of the DC horror characters, or just characters who have a scent of mystery about them, I really like the Phantom Stranger, mainly due to the fact that we know nothing about him, and it works perfectly that way. In this story, while I’m not a huge fan of him using guns (which he can appear to just conjure up) as it doesn’t fit his character, he is a fantastic character in feature in this story and quite honestly, along with Waxahachie, they do feel like the main heroic characters of the story as they are the ones trying to stop Deadman, giving us an interesting and unique perspective. One of my favourite parts of the story focuses on Deadman and Joanne, a character who, at first, comes across as pretty regular and dull, but when Joanne gives Deadman a therapy session, it shows just how interesting Deadman can be and how the events of Love After Death have affected him. This shows us some great character moments of interest, where we slowly see Deadman turn back to how he once was and as you’d expect, at the very end, he saves the day (with a method that doesn’t make much sense, but more on that later). Quite honestly, for the positives, there isn’t much else to say, mainly due to reasons that I will explain in a moment, but one aspect of this story that I very much enjoy was when Hugh, a person that Deadman possessed to beat up gay people, died due to Deadman leaving him on top of a tree to fall. This is an excellent aspect of the story and one aspect of the character which I have always been interested in. This is because Deadman can possess pretty much anybody, but there is usually a negative effect and in this case, Deadman is pretty much responsible for the death of Hugh, for which he later feels guilt for and it sort of becomes the catalyst for why Deadman decides that he needs to change and recover.
But now, the dreaded moment you have all probably been waiting for, mainly because I didn’t write much for the positives and I hinted at why I didn’t like some aspects of the story. Let’s put it like this: pretty much the same problems I had with the Love After Death occur here, plus even more stuff that I don’t like. Just to repeat what I said in the previous story while putting it in context of this one, the villains of this story are terrible… all of them. At least in the previous story there was the one or two decent villains, but no, here, they are all incredibly bland mainly due to the fact that they are all just evil demons and nothing else. I understand that Deadman is meant to sort of be the villain of the story, but if that’s the case, then what was the point of all of the demons. Deadman could have done something similar, but instead, we just get a load of demon clones. Sure, there is something interesting about them, like how they can sort of grow in caves or whatever the f*ck, but that means nothing to me when they are just plain useless. Not only that, but remember how in the previous story there were large moments of filler and the miniseries should have been cut down a bit, well here it is even worse that with some rewriting and removing all of the bits that are just not needed, Exorcism could be cut in half. I believe that the first part begins very well, keeping the creepy tone and atmosphere that made the first one feel like a vintage horror story, but this one loses that excellent touch and replaces with people fighting demons, which pretty much goes on for all of the second issue. Was I the only one that thought that the three ghosts possessing those three youths was a sh*t idea? Not only does it date badly to me, but it also just comes across as a mediocre idea that you would only see on those old children’s tv shows that only air at about 4am. That idea doesn’t even go that far anyway, as nearly all of them die not long after they are introduced. Then we get to the ending of the story, which is conclusive and does well for the most part, but what I don’t understand is how Deadman defeats the big main villain, which is him that pretty much pulling some cosmic energy out of his ar*e and causing a huge explosion, which doesn’t make any sense and it just feels like too much of a late decision. Like I mentioned before, I thought that the suggested and appropriate tone of the story was forgotten. Like the Love After Death story, this tale should have been one of horror and I think that if it would have gone down that route, it would have succeeded, but it didn’t, meaning that the horror surrounding Deadman and the haunted church were used in such a way that kind of ruined what potential they could have had. Reading this, you probably think that I despise this story, but I really don’t. At best, it just about reaches below average, but its not terrible due to the great scenes featuring Deadman and the others that I pointed out earlier.
In my view, the art by Jones is an improvement to the previous story, mainly due to the lack of lines and patterns, which became a bit of a headache and a mess to look at. Like before, Jones does make the story look more like a horror story, which I think it should have been and there are some excellent panels. Particularly in this tale
however, Deadman looks even more scary, as if he is a rotting skeleton that is a borderline psycho. Art like that is Jones at his finest and in this case, he does make the story a lot better than it could have been.
Story: 6.5/10
Art: 9.5/10
VERDICT
Overall, my views on Deadman: Love After Death 1-2 and Deadman: Exorcism 1-2 are very similar, yet so different. Love After Death is a good story that feels like a genuine horror story featuring some very good characters, despite its flaws. Exorcism is alright as while it portrays an excellently written Deadman along with other good characters like Waxahachie and Phantom Stranger, it does have a load of problems, especially in the villain department. That all being said, it is clear that Mike Baron and Kelley Jones had left their mark on the dead trapeze artist and it is definitely safe to say that their perspective on Deadman is certainly a memorable one.
Stories: 7/10
Art: 9/10
Highlighted Character: Deadman (Boston Brand)
Next Review: Batman: Red Rain (Batman & Dracula: Red Rain). Written by Doug Moench with art by Kelley Jones and Malcolm Jones III. Expected to be published by 13/10/2019.
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