The first The Damned mini was about power. This new one begins with family.
So here’s the scene and it may be familiar to old-time movie fans. James Cagney, wearing a lousy, cheap black suit, stumbles into a darkened apartment, just happy to have escaped the mob bloodbath that took place on the other side of town. Maybe he’s been shot but it’s only just a flesh wound. He slumps down into a chair, about to pass out just as a monster (maybe even played by Bela Lugosi) steps out from the shadows and clubs him over the head. Now imagine all of that as a comic book.
Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s earlier The Damned mini showed us the life of Eddie, a low-level mobster who’s often killed and then brought back to life when someone touches his corpse. He absorbs their life and leaves them dead. Eddie was caught in the middle of a mob war between a couple of monsters struggling over control. At the end of that mini, Eddie was set up well as a survivor as he worked the competing forces against each into an uneasy detente resulting in the lesser of a couple of different evil situations. Each time Eddie dies, he’s transported to a kind of purgatory while he waits for a resurrection. On one of the last trips in the last miniseries, he saw someone who looks like his mother standing in the distant mists. The new mini introduces a new character to Eddie’s story; his brother Morgan. Like Eddie, Morgan is cursed and we find out it’s tied into a bad deal his father made with a demon. The two brothers who played together as children have grown apart and Morgan refuses Eddie when Eddie asks for help in finding their mother. But sometimes family runs deeper than personal feelings and Morgan decides to try and hear Eddie out.
With The Damned, Bunn and Hurtt have two masters to answer to, the detective genre and the monster genre. Both genres have distinct and separate rules that they have to adhere to. A lot of times when you see a cross-pollination of genres like this, both end up getting watered down so you only get a fraction of a genre story. Bunn and Hurtt perfectly blend both seamlessly with a great story and a lot of fun as well. Bunn’s story in this issue uses the genres as a setting to tell a story about brothers. The mobsters and the monsters add color to the story but this is Eddie and Morgan’s story, about brotherly love and what can tear it apart.
Hurtt’s artwork is what makes the setting work– his perfect ability to draw monsters and demons in exquisitely tailored three-piece suits while making it look like Eddie just woke up in his cheap off-the-rack suit and tie. He makes the character types easily recognizable without falling into cliched depictions of monsters or demons. He also knows how his characters carry themselves, how they walk and how they slump over on a bar stool. He also knows how to play comedy, with a chase sequence at the end of the issue that could have easily been an Scooby-Doo haunted house chase but ends up being containing just the right amounts of tension and laughs.
Bunn and Hurtt pick up The Damned right where they left off. In fact, Prodigal Sons starts off quicker and tighter than the first miniseries and remains just as good as that first story. Prodigal Sons captures the magic and energy of its separate elements and perfectly blends them into a revitting tale of brothers and family.
The Damned Prodigal Sons #1
Story by: Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt
Written by: Cullen Bunn
Drawn by: Brian Hurtt
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Tags: Brian Hurtt, Cullen Bunn, Oni Press, The Dmaned