45 Days Of CCS, #18: 666 Comics

The latest iteration of 666 Comics, edited by Ian Richardson has some of the usual CCS names in a fun format: six stories, six pages per comic, six panels per page. Some of the artists take extreme liberties in these restrictions, as what is a "panel" is pushed to the limit at times, but the spirit of the idea is there. As the title would suggest, some kind of deviltry is generally part of the package, but the tone swings wildly from comedy to emo to twisty EC-style horror.

Max Riffner opens up with "Stretch Mark Of The Beast," a Rosemary's Baby/The Omen spoof where a man becomes pregnant by way of his wife after she joins a satanic cult. This is a classic two-track narrative, as the text is a straightforward, sad-sack narrative about being left by his wife then leading to being totally oblivious to the demon inside of him. Meanwhile, Riffner goes all-out with gore and over-the-top images until the final one, which puts the protagonist's stupidity into sharp, ominous relief.

Denis St. John is up to his usual EC Comics-flavored silliness with "Hellarella Pinball Ballyhell,", with his vampy demoness luring a demon to play a pinball version of her. The twist? He becomes the ball when he puts his quarter in! His line, as always, is pleasingly inky and dense, which adds a little weight to the cavalcade of puns mixed with cartoony violence. 

Richardson's "Hell Of A Deal" is the most traditional horror story in the comic. It's about a woman who turns to a psychic because of a deal she made with a demon. The psychic promises to help, but she gets a nasty surprise when the nature of the initial deal is revealed. Richardson's art (and lettering) reminds me a lot of Jack Chick's--naturalistic but with cartoony expressions, and a certain rigidity for effect.

As for the other stories, Jamie Messerman's "The Devil Takes Care Of His Own" is a tender story about a caring demon and someone going through trauma, done in a fairly standard, manga-inspired style. It's an odd fit for this anthology, but then there's usually one outlier in Richardson's collections. Jeff Lorentz's "Root Of All Evil" is a pretty obvious satire where the devil is talking about how humanity has ruined Earth far more than he has. Amanda Kahl's "Superstition" is one of the best stories in the collection, about a midwife in a small town encountering horror in a delivery. Connecting it to the superstitions that are really a manifestation of collective wisdom was a bit of clever storytelling. The use of blacks is especially effective, though the italic font is distracting. Overall, Riffner and Kahl were probably the best of the lot, while Messerman's piece was such a tonal shift (visually and thematically) that it felt out of place.