It’s a better issue. There’s character work, not development because it’s flashback, but now MacGregor is a white gay man FBI agent who doesn’t understand he works with a bunch of bigots and, in flashback, is worried about the 2016 election. In the present, election’s already happened. We find out the white lady partner, Shaw, doesn’t vote, knows white guys are bigots and doesn’t complain about anything. They have these conversations while investigating missing children cases, which are taking place around the Southwest, but centered in L.A.

The investigation figures into the present day, starting with MacGregor and Shaw waking up in a warehouse without any pulses. They then discover one of their fellow agents is similarly without a pulse but has had a different experience—and reaction—than they’ve had. The entire present action takes place in the warehouse, lights out, mysterious figures and noises down the aisles, the partners finding themselves without pulses, then finding their colleague. At the end of the issue, there are some crossovers between the two storylines, which writer Garth Ennis toggles between.

As a comic, manipulative content concerns aside, it’s a technical success. Ennis and artist Goran Sudžuka do a good job with it. The flashbacks are visually without dread, but there’s foreboding on a couple fronts. First, the looming election, second, the criminal investigation. Even without knowing it might figure into the present, the investigation in the past is slightly uncanny. It’s not supernatural, but it’s discomforting as the agents expound on it, and the incongruities stick out. Again, good writing from Ennis. Like, he does the work to get the right effect.

To what end? We’ll have to wait until next time because Ennis finishes the issue ends with a revelation cliffhanger, one the agents know about, but the reader doesn’t. Yet, presumably.

I’d be really impressed if Ennis doesn’t address it.

While I’m still not enthusiastic about A Walk Through Hell, it does appear Ennis knows how to do what he’s doing. And Sudžuka’s art is excellent. Wish he was doing a different book—heck, wish he and Ennis were doing a better book together. The plotting with the reveals is a little off; the series runs twelve, and I’m guessing I’ll be griping it didn’t just run eight by the finale. This issue is stretched out to delay the plot from fully starting, which means there will be at least three issues before Ennis establishes the ground situation. Trade-write much?

But whatever. It’s an improvement I wasn’t expecting.

I was geared up for a Garth Ennis war comic, but A Walk Through Hell is a supernatural horror police procedural; FBI agents are the leads (so far), but still. And it’s very modern; it opens with an active shooter situation at a mall at Christmastime, there are tweets, one of the characters bitches about Trump. It’s very interested in acknowledging as many zeitgeists as possible, which, again, I wasn’t expecting.

It’s okay supernatural horror police (FBI) procedural. Feels a lot like it’s an Avatar comic, not an AfterShock. Specifically, it feels a lot like Alan Moore’s The Courtyard and I’m really hoping that feeling goes away; I don’t want to see Ennis aping Moore.

Goran Sudžuka does the art, which is good. He paces it well, has a good amount of detail; the issue opens with foreboding narration from one of the leads, which repeats and expands at the end, as we find out something’s going very wrong.

But there’s not much to it so far. It’s sensational and exploitative, but there’s no meat yet. All of Ennis’s devices work to engage the reader in things besides the story, because the story’s going to start next issue. This issue’s the prologue, though also not a great one on those terms because the characters aren’t established yet. It’s not the traditional Ennis male and female cop team though; those usually involve the guy being incompetent and the lady being badass. He’s not going that route. There’s also not a lot of humor, just impending doom.

We’ll see. It’s a terrible time to be reading this comic for numerous reasons but… there’s never going to be a good time to read a comic with this content.

I vaguely remember the characters’ names—the narrator mentions them in the opening narration, but since it’s set against someone else’s horrific experiences, they don’t click. Though at least one of them is hard to spell, I remember. Lots of Zs. I don’t know. I was expecting some WWII comic, not a ripped from the bloody headlines.