By Mike Carey & Michael Gaydos (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84023-764-3
What happens after you die? In this particular instance when a man is killed in a mugging he wakes up in a burning desert being confronted by mysterious strangers giving him presents and directions to a huge city in the middle of all this nowhere. The city is called Inferno.
When he arrives in the feudal metropolis he is finally convinced that he is in the land of the dead, but finds it much harder to accept that he is in fact a well known figure, complete with true friends and many, many enemies. He remembers nothing of the person he apparently was, Giacomo Terrence, a powerful wizard who escaped this Hell, swearing to return and liberate it from its satanic overlord, Baal.
What ensues is a more than adequate supernatural mystery thriller, as Terrence strives to recover his memory and purpose whilst avoiding the fate literally worse than death that the minions of Baal intend for him.
The full fantasy cast and the spartan, emotive line-work of Michael Gaydos in capturing the eerie nature of this sparse lean thriller will please followers of the genre, and fans of writer Mike Carey might be intrigued to see his early development in this collected miniseries that was originally part of a shared universe created by Gary Reed and James Pruett for Calibre Comics from 1995-1997.
©1996, 2003 Gary Reed & Mike Carey. Art © 1996, 2003 Michael Gaydos. All Rights Reserved.