Hyperbole is extremely common on the internet in general, and on comic sites in particular, but I say this with all the sincerity I can muster: This is one of the worst comics I’ve ever seen.
Written by Matthew Tomao
Illustrated by Josh Medors
Is a man consumed by pure evil capable of redemption? Forged in the fires of sin, dead torturer Inquisitor General Sabbath is reborn, a specter hell-bent upon reclaiming his lost human senses. Battling the Avatars of Sin as well as his former masters, Sabbath absorbs the suffering of massacre victims, growing in strength. However, with each massacre, Sabbath’s compassion deepens for the unfortunate souls who have bonded with him. Will this new found strength draw Sabbath back to humanity or push him further away?
$18.99
“Sabbath” starts with an uninformative page of prose. You would probably expect this to prime a reader for the story, and you would be wrong. There are some nuggets of information tangentially related to the plot, but most of it is never actually relevant to the story. This is too bad, because the plot desperately needs some context. Tomao presents a world very different from our own, but seems to expect you to know instinctively know it as well as he does without any exposition at all.
The narrative is full of crazy from page one. The physical embodiment of Gluttony walks around a tomb under the Watican [sic], and talks with a lot of lofty sounding words, but most of it’s gibberish. He pulls a worm out of his neck, eats it, then a full grown man bursts out of his stomach. Then his stomach is a TV, and the man who burst out is apparently a pedophile. The children this newborn man molested come out of the TV and attack him. Then guards burst in and shoot the man. This was all orchestrated so Gluttony could write symbols in the man’s blood. Then Gluttony pukes out a soul sphere containing all seven sins. Did any of that make sense to you? If not, don’t worry. That’s just a sign you’re sane. Oh, and there’s some comment about how Enron was the work of pure evil. Very poignant.
More stuff happens, and sometimes the action on one page does seem to have followed directly from the previous page. More often, you’ll be checking back to see if you skipped a page by accident. By the end of the book, you’ll have picked up on vague themes in the book. The hero, Sabbath, is trying to kill the embodiments of the seven deadly sins. His body is a doorway to a mirror universe full of evil. He gets stronger if he’s near the sight of a terrible massacre. The Pope is evil. Neither the why nor the how of these things ever get explanation. They just happen because.
The lack of clarity isn’t because Tomao took the “Show, don’t tell” meme to heart. He has lots of dialogue, and it’s terrible. Characters make long, grand monologues but don’t actually say much of anything. Through large words and some Latin, he tries to make everything seem deep, but it comes out more like a jumbled word salad. Have you ever had a friend show you a short story they wrote, or a picture they drew, or some other thing they put lots of effort into and of which they were really proud, and you didn’t have the heart to tell them you didn’t like it? Or that it was downright bad? That’s what will come to mind if you read “Sabbath”: that no one had the courage to tell Tomao his masterpiece stunk so badly the paint was peeling off the walls.
Medors’ art isn’t much better. Individually, each panel looks good. Very good, actually. He just doesn’t seem to get the idea of sequential storytelling. Done well, two panels put together should tell more than the sum of them singly. There should be clear activity or emotion from one frame of the story to the next. That’s very rare in this book. Fight scenes are visually chaotic with no flow at all. Characters seem to be instantly transported from place to place. These images would be more appropriate for illustrated prose than a comic. Then again, with all the words Tomao puts on the page, maybe that’s what Medors thought this was going to be.
The only extra included in this collection is an ‘interview’ with Tomao. That word gets quotations because there’s no indication who’s asking the questions. Tomao mostly talks about how hard he’s worked on the story, and how it’s very important to him. Apparently he tried to make the book with several artists before deciding Medors best captured his vision. If that’s really true, it’s curious to think of how much worse the book could’ve been.
Final Verdict: 1.0 – Pass It gets a one because I’m not sure if the Multiversity scale goes to zero.
