- The Plague #1: Ill Fate
- Lucky Devil Comics
- Created & Written by Styles Pacheco
- Illustrated by Daniel Jose Ruiz Jimeno & Miguel Ayuso
- Colors by
- Josh Rodriguez
- Miguel Ayuso
- Nicky C.
- Available now in digital format
“You took everything from me. You wanted to unleash a Plague on this world? Well you just got one.
I’m coming for you. All of you…
And I’m bringing Hell with me.”
So begins the story of Diego Marcus Diaz, security agent for the Inqugenex Corporation, until the truth is put in his hands. As his world unravels, Diego has to question everything and by the end of the first issue, his answers leave him with few options. Inqugenex is not what they seem, and they are not out to save the world from a deadly pandemic.
I mean, look at the name… “Inqugenex”… it sounds super evil.
The Plague is a new comic, funded through Kickstarter and now kicking off what I hope can be an ongoing flagship title for new indie publisher Lucky Devil Comics. As opening salvos go, it was a pretty solid start with room to grow. Creator/writer Styles Pacheco leans hard into a dark & broody voiceover, with a lot of exposition throughout the issue as Diego tells his story. It moves along pretty well, skirting the line of becoming overly talky. It’ll be interesting to see how Pacheco moves forward with his story. It’s my hope that he finds a sweet spot and allows for a little more “show, don’t tell” to work into his narrative, as I counted two panels in the entire issue without any kind of text.
Another item I have to mention for an honest review is the panel layouts and lettering. The borders between panels are black, and it was tough to find the separation between darkly lit illustrations. It’s something that could have been handled with better placement of the dialogue. As it is, I had to stop to figure out the order of some of the panels, and the correct sequence in the dialogue… Not a deal-breaker, just something that took me out of the story in a few places, but easy enough to fix in future issues.
The art team of Daniel Jose Ruiz Jimeno & Miguel Ayuso are doing some fantastic work, embracing the dark supernatural tone and laying out some gorgeous designs. It’d be interesting to see how much reference work they’ve done, especially with background characters and settings. The world of The Plague is populated by people rendered in a way that gives the impression of their own stories and lives lived. If there’s really a place called Dublin Donuts in New Orleans, Louisiana, I wanna go there.
I’m going to have to list The Plague as a contender for our Diamond in the Rough Award. There’s plenty of good & great to balance out what needs work. As a first issue, it does a good job of peeling back the curtain on a supernatural world of dark powers and evil forces in play. I’m hoping the Lucky Devil team keeps it going, and I’ll be looking forward to checking out what comes next when they do.
Final Score: 10/13
