Written by: Caitlin Yarsky
Art by: Caitlin Yarsky
Colours by: Caitlin Yarsky
Letters by: Clayton Cowles
Cover: Caitlin Yarsky
Published by: Dark Horse Comics
Jerome Jameel is a character that’s easy to like. He’s a devoted father and a dedicated husband, navigating the ups and downs of everyday life and interpersonal family dynamics with humor and buoyancy. Not exactly what you’d expect of a demon, right?
Issue #1 of Living Hell follows Jerome Jameel on a fateful night that changes the life he’s worked so hard to gain.  Â
The first page acts as a prologue. We learn that Jerome often struggles to restrain his mischievous tendencies (and therefore keeps a steady job) and that his current part-time gig as a bartender provides plenty of opportunities for him to get himself into trouble. There’s also an element of foreshadowing on this page, with a dark and foreboding figure that apparently drags demons, like Jerome, back to the underworld, called a Shepherd.
The transition from the prologue to being fully immersed in Jerome’s family life on page two is seamless. While Jerome cooks dinner, we meet his wife, Sita, and daughter, Joanne. Sita is worried about chemtrails, chemicals, her mother, her life trajectory, and not being the favorite parent. Her general air of unhappiness and stress ends with her leaving Jerome and Joanne to eat dinner alone, making the household tension palpable.
We then follow Jerome to work, where we meet his friend and fellow demon in hiding, Beelzebub, or Felix, as the mortals call him. The conversation with Felix reveals more backstory about the interpersonal issues that Jerome has been facing with Sita and more about the Shepherd we first saw on the first page. Neither of them wants to get caught by a Shepherd.
When Jerome finally closes down the bar for the night and heads back home, he’s caught in a tunnel by the Shepherd Manannán, who tells him that it’s time to return to the underworld. Or die. Jerome kills Manannán and unwittingly becomes the new Shepherd, responsible for hunting down other demons like himself, under the threat of losing his daughter. This is also where the reader learns which god Jerome used to be before he was “reclassified” as a demon. For the sake of not spoiling the reveal, I won’t mention which god he was, but I will say that Jerome’s mischievous tendencies make more sense once you know.
This comic is a mixture of very real interpersonal issues juxtaposed and intertwined against a fantastical element – and that’s part of what makes it easy to get lost in the story. There are intimate moments, scenes of a father and daughter dancing in a grocery store, family vacations, and grandparents cooking meals. And then there are things like Jerome poking fun at Sita’s conspiracy concerns. That makes the blowout fight between them at the end of the issue really interesting because all the things she’s been paranoid of seem to validate her new distrust in her husband. In other words, Jerome accidentally ignites Sita’s latent fears. I’m curious to see how this ultimately resolves for Jerome and Sita – given how delicately the storytelling handled this complex situation. I suspect it will continue to do so in issues to come.
The story is as engaging as the artwork is consistent. The panel-to-panel storytelling flows well and is easy to understand. The line work and coloring look like they were tailor-made for each other, and because Yarsky is responsible for both of those things, they essentially were.
Yarsky’s artistic maturity shines through in her coordination of hand gestures and facial expressions. A gentle crease in a brow or a barely raised eyebrow can sometimes convey more emotion than words can describe – these subtleties are not lost on Yarsky. I find the characters so believable because the acting is so natural. The compositional gazes between characters tell as much of the story as the dialogue and captions do.   Â
Cowles’ lettering is clean and clear, balanced and consistent. It is always clear which character is talking. Even on pages with a lot of back-and-forth dialogue, the word balloons and tails are clean and uncluttered and complement the artwork. For example, as Felix becomes more and more drunk throughout Jerome’s work shift, Felix’s balloons become more stylized in accordance. The lettering is carefully crafted to the context on each page, and the stylizations throughout fit the artwork like a glove.
I can’t wait to see more from Yarsky and Cowles!
Overall: 10/10
K.L.Murphy has BA in English, writes and reviews comics, and habitually pets cats. Comics are all unique and each one represents an enormous amount of thought and effort. Murphy reviews comics based on a variety of factors, but focuses on the artwork, storytelling, and pacing.
