ACW #638 – Demon

Action Comics Weekly #638 (Demon)
“The Road to Hell”
Writer – Alan Grant
Pencils – Mark Pacella
Inks – Bill Wray
Letters – John Costanza
Colors – Tatjana Wood
Editor – Dan Raspler

Demon Day is here.  Hey, he’s on the cover too.


Yeah, don’t have much more to say about that, pre-rambles can’t all be winners (or izzit, can’t ever)… let’s just get into it!


—

We open with Glenda and Randu at the Gotham City Airport trying to board a plane with the Philosopher’s Stone.  Looks like the 1989-approximation of the T.S.A. has a bit of a problem with that, which strikes me as kind of odd.  I mean, the “stone” is more like a little rock.  I know plenty of people who would take home rocks and shells from the places they’ve been… nobody says boo!  Maybe they’d be more trepadacious in the post 9/11 world… but, this just looks like an excuse to draw attention to it.  Fine for what it is, I s’pose.  Meanwhile over at the Hill, Jason Blood is attacked by that weird warrior.  The Warrior himself summons Etrigan, which… gotta say, probably isn’t in its best interests.

Indeed, over the course of the next handful of panels, Etrigan absolutely wrecks the dude!

The Demon then tells Blood that he’s headed toward Tintagel, which is a place in England with ties to the Arthurian Legends.  Stands to reason that Morgaine LeFey might just be lurking around there.  When Blood wakes up, he hitches a ride.

We shift scenes to somewhere else, where Merlin has been strung up by a weirdo demon-beast… thing.  The baddie drinks a big ol’ swig of the Magician’s blood, as he waits for their guests to arrive.

We wrap up at Heathrow Airport, where poor Glenda is still getting static about her “pet rock”.  With a wave of his hand, Randu gets the T.S.A.-adjacent fellow to back off.  Kinda begs the question why he didn’t just lead with that.  Glenda peeks into the stone, and sees… a witch!  Is it Morgaine LeFey?  Is it someone else altogether??  Do we care either way???  I know the answer to at least one of those questions!

—

This feels like a chapter that could’ve been summed up in a single comics page.  I guess that might be unfair, so many of these latter Action Comics Weekly stories feel the same way… but, it seems especially true here.


I’m really struggling to come up with anything to say.  Can’t say the story is bad, or even all that dull (which I initially feared), but… ehh, it kinda just “happened”?  A stop-gap between last week’s cliffhanger, and Jason Blood’s trip to Tintagel… with a dash of getting Glenda and Randu into the playing field.


Not bad… serviceable.  Art’s nice!


Tomorrow: Operators are (still) standing by!