The Stoned Sword: Diablo: Sword of Justice #2 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: I couldn’t spoil the plot to this book if I tried.

With God as my witness, I didn’t know that DC’s Diablo: Sword of Justice was related to the Diablo videogame by Blizzard… and if I had, I probably wouldn’t have bought it. Comic books based on videogames are almost never any good (A few outlier exceptions aside), and a comic book based on Diablo would have an uphill battle worse than a lot of them. Hell, I’ve played Diablo and I had no idea it had a story beyond Kill, Loot, Advance… which is less a compelling story than a kickass New Year’s Resolution.

There’s not much to Diablo’s gameplay to hang a story on. Not being a sword and sorcery guy, the times I have played the game were at a buddy’s house, taking over his saved games while he was on beer runs, and it’s not like I was confused as to why I was killing giant spiders on level five just because I missed the storyline of the first five levels, wherein my pal killed 1,600 giant rats. So on that level, the Diablo comic book fails, because I missed the first issue, and now that I’ve read the second, I have no idea what the fuck is going on.

This book opens with a poem: “Fear is the fuel | Blood is the spark| Kindle the rage | and bring forth the dark.” Which might be something from the videogame, or an attempt to sound all dungeons and dragony to people, but popped me right out of the book as I became convinced that that third line was rewritten at the printers after Amazon announced the Kindle Fire. Regardless of the intent, it did nothing to tell me what was happening in the story… but that’s okay, because neither did the book.

We open with some dude who’s carved up his skin and is ranting about evil residing within his own walls, so apparently we’ve met Skeeter, The Methhead of Mordor. Some blonde kid shanks him, and it turns out he’s not only methhead’s son (which we know because he whimpers “father” before the shank), but our hero (which we know because it’s a fantasy and he’s a blonde kid). We then suddenly jump to the kid in a cave with a sword and a woman, complaining that he doesn’t know if the sword or the woman is singing to him, proving that methamphetamine addiction is a family disease.

Turns out the singing woman is a wizard who was following the music of the Resonance of the Crystal Arch, which, considering there is no clear explanation as to what that actually means because I “lack any mystical training,” I will assume is a jam band from Portland. Then the cops show up, and they’re all carved up like dear old dad was, so I’m guessing… shit, I don’t know what to guess anymore. So they capture blonde kid, chain him up like Jesus, then some guys eat a live pig, and the wizard comes back and there’s teleportation, and either this book is completely baffling or I’m somehow still in 1991, suffering from that bad “experience” while waiting for Laser Floyd to start.

The art by Joseph Lacroix is by far and away the best part of this book. He’s not an artist I’m familiar with, but his style works well for a swords and stabbing kind of book. It’s abstract, with scratched-in shadows, a limited color palatte and a good eye for the kind of giant, bombastic weapons people spend 40 hours grinding at to pick up in a Blizzard game. The general look is good, although his action sequences are a bit muddled due to the same stylization; the biggest fight sequence is a splash page with faces superimposed over a menange of fight drawings. As a fantasy pin-up it kicks ass; as a comic book fight sequence, it could use a little work. Still, if you’re a fantasy fan (and unless you review comics for a Web site, there’s no other reason for you to buy this book), you’ll probably like the look.

This comic isn’t all bad; while the story didn’t work in any way for me, some of writer Aaron Williams dialogue is fun – I will be using the phrase “Arrest him. Harshly,” at my day job as soon as is possible. And the look is good if you’re into fantasy pinups. But unless you’re a hardcore fantasy fan, or maintaining a barely-contained erection waiting for Diablo III to be released by Blizzard, I’d give this one a wide berth.