An angel, a demon and horseman of apocalypse – it’s not the opening gambit of a cheesy joke, but the cast list of the new comic from writer Frank Martin that sees these characters thrown into present day scenarios with chilling results in Insane Comics’ Modern Testament – Anthology of The Ethereal. 

Publisher: Insane Comics
Writer: Frank Martin
Artists: Federico Zumel, Jeff Coney, Branco Jovanovic, Tomasz Witas
Price: $2.99 from Insanecomicsdotcom.

Frank Martin’s Modern Testament – Anthology of The Ethereal features three short stories introducing us to various biblical entities (a demon, an angel and a horseman of the apocalypse) who are all living in the modern world. It’s an ambitious idea with some strong concepts, which are ultimately let down by some poor execution and a heavy weight of expectation. (Inevitably, any story involving these kinds of characters in modern day setting will garner comparisons to books like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman or DC/Vertigo’s Hellblazer – both of which are very high water marks indeed!)

Our first story “Fallen Angel” sees a former warrior angel attempting to relax in a bar when he is confronted by a fellow former angel with a fiery agenda. Inevtiably this results in a bar fight, the rescue of a waitress-in-distress and the revelation of a larger conspiracy, involving a mysterious man in a hat. This is clearly our hero of the piece, but as is often the case with a story like this there is a lot of exposition to explain the various back stories going on, and despite having quite a bit of action on the page, there is a lot of complex and heavy-handed narrative which makes the story tricky to follow. The artwork doesn’t help either with Federico Zumel and Jeff Coney combining to create a chaotic style which doesn’t quite have the sophistication to make the story work as it may have intended.

Next up is “The Bad Guy” which sees two parents tormented by a troublesome teen who it turns out is possessed by a demon. (Any parent of teenage kids will often have wondered if this is the case!) As they call the local priest and get their daughter exorcised you can’t help but be reminded of horror classic the Exorcist, while all the way through the narration makes reference to Al Pacino’s Scarface. The Bad Guy is short and punchy, and probably the best of the the three tales as a result. It has an interesting self-contained feel, and does a much better job of introducing us to the villain of the piece than Fallen Angel does with the hero.

The final story is perhaps the strongest conceptually, but also the most flawed. Martin takes the horsemen of the apocalypse and speculates on what they are up to as they wait for the end of days – with them ultimately doing the opposite to their pre-determined roles. This sees War on a peace demo, Pestilence doing aid work in Africa and Death delivering babies. Meanwhile the star of story, Famine, is force feeding a woman to death a la John Doe in the movie Se7en. After the originality of these first three it feels the weakest of the concepts and while Famine rambles on about the inequalities of modern life and the hypocrisy of people’s attitude to food he continues to torment his victim which feels both gratuitous and unpleasant. In time Famine could become a quite interesting character but as an introduction the whole story lacks a sense of depth to make it truly horrific. Instead it feels like it is trying too hard to be edgy without every quite managing it. This isn’t helped by the slightly cartoonish artwork of Tomasz Witas, which is very good, however it means that the final panel of the victim being suffocated with a corn dog feels very flippant when portraying what is a nasty (and mysoginistic) act, and leaves the reader with a rather unpleasant taste in their mouth.

“Modern Testament – Anthology of The Ethereal is ambitious in its scope, with some strong ideas and themes, but it lacks a sophistication and subtlety of execution to make it stand out from the crowd of other Sandman/Hellblazer wannabe books.”