Review: Nancy in Hell #1 (of 4) by El Torres (writer) and Juan Hose Ryp (artist), Image Comics.

Nancy introduces herself as the "nice girl" who was supposed to kill the bad guy at the end of the horror picture. Instead she got killed and ended up in Hell. After an initial, very short, period of distress, Nancy takes to the Hell lifestyle quite well.

After setting up a nice relationship between Nancy and "the Philosopher", the bar they're in (yes, a bar in Hell) is attacked by a fellow called Mr Macabre. The Philosopher is unceremoniously whacked and Nancy takes up a chainsaw as her weapon of choice (wonder where that idea came from) to lop off some demon heads. As I said, she seems to take to the Hell lifestyle quite well.

And of course it being Hell, we have an appearance of a brooding, blonde, and buff, Beelzebub who needs Nancy's help.

Rather than the good girl gone bad, we've got the good girl gone to a bad place. Although 'good girl' is arguable as Nancy is into "Hell's Angels parties" and is dressed, ahem, provocatively. This comic reminds me of another girl gone to Hell, that being good ol' Lady Death. Seems like we're back to the bad girls of the 90s (and it's Image too!).

The Hell that Nancy's landed in though happens to look a lot like a male heterosexual fantasy. There's enough gratuitous crotch shots (starting with the cover) and implied lesbianism to fill a teenage boy's dreams for weeks. Apparently Hell doesn't cater for gays, females, or anybody else.

Why did I pick this up? Well, with a title like Nancy in Hell I was expecting something a little more tongue in cheek, but the only tongues in cheeks here are those involving girl-on-girl, action (or demon-on-girl or.. you get the picture...)

There's little on plot, but a lot of demon killing and corpse dismembering. Juan Jose Ryp's artwork is over the top, excessive, and excessively specular. 

I'm over this sort of stuff having seen a lot of it before (girl gone to Hell - Lady Death; brooding Lucifer - Linsner's Dawn, Gaiman's The Sandman, but I'm sure there's a host of 16 year-old boys who haven't and they'll no doubt have a ball with it.

This: Seen it before

Forthcoming: Not for me, thanks all the same.