Shallow Hell: Death-Defying Devil #5 Wraps Longest Lunch Ever

The Devil has gone to Hell...and taken his readers with him.

The fifth and final issue of Dynamite's DEATH-DEFYING DEVIL pits the masked hero against the ultimate evil -- The Devil. But the father of lies has slipped a little over the eons, having fallen over the edge of the abyss into a bottomless pit of banality as he gets into a street brawl with Bart Hill, the Death-Defying Devil. Or, in this case, the Devil-Defying Devil, which someone must have thought was a cute idea.

Let's recap the last year of issues succinctly: Bart Hill awakes in a strange house populated by a handful of random people who talk his ear off and serve food. The street gang outside that harasses them constantly are actually demons, sons of Lucifer, and he wants a soul.

Where is this house? Who are these people? Why are they there? How did Bart get there? For that matter, does good triumph over evil, and see the righteous rescued from the clutches of the demonic hordes?

For those answers, you'd have needed a story. When I reviewed the first issue of this series, that's what I thought we would all get, with a decent little mystery thrown in. It appeared that there was going to be something deep and, possibly, infernally epic happening. By the time the second issue rolled around, that expectation was on shaky ground. The Devil was in Hell, and Hell was a Victorian hostel.

What writer Gail Simone delivers is a bunch of random cutout characters who endlessly tell you their back story while passing sandwiches and cutting slices of cake. It's less of a comic and more of a menu with angst. There is no plot narrative, no closure, no satisfaction to be had. Ultimately, this series becomes a waste of $25 -- $20 for the cover price, and $1 for the loss of tree limbs used in the making of each physical copy

The series features serviceable artwork from Walter Geovani and a nice painted cover from Inhyuk Lee.