THE DAMNED (Oni)
Written by Cullen Bunn, drawn by Matt Hurtt
Collects The Damned #1-5

The first time I heard about Cullen Bunn and The Damned, his demon-filled gangster series from Oni, was on an episode of iFanboy, back when I watched that podcast. It didn’t really register because I was probably doing something else at the time. So, when I started doing research on one of my very first CBR assignments and realized I’d be talking to Bunn about his Superman/Batman arc as well as the Oni book The Tooth, I was excited to read more of his stuff. The interview went great and those pieces turned out pretty good. I immediately started looking around for The Damned and wound up trading for it on Sequential Swap. Like most books, trades and magazines I have, though, it sat around for a bit (it’s hard to give time to reading with a baby and assignments on the frontburners). So, when it came to vacation a few weeks back, I packed a good deal of books to check out and The Damned collection was on the top of the list.

To expand a bit on the story, it revolves around Eddie, a guy who sold his soul to some demons and now can’t stay dead if someone touches his corpse. He was out for three days and comes back to find himself smack in the middle of what’s about to be a war between demon gangs. He’s given an assignment by his boss that winds up leading to a much more insidious plot that would wind up putting a group of humans on a bit more of a level playing field with the demons.

Bunn does a great job of touching on elements you’d expect. Eddie has a shady past. He works all the angles. He’s always on team Eddie. He has a complicated relationship with his former girlfriend who’s with a different mobster now. Once you get past the tropes, though, there’s some really cool things being done with the bigger plot. About halfway through the focus shifts from the assignment Eddie was given into one that’s a lot bigger.

I hope that the Showtime series based on the book does a great job of capturing not only Bunn’s world, but the one that Hurtt drew. It’s a great mix of fantasy aesthetics that goes right along with the 20s/30s/40s gangster style that we’ve all come to know and love from movies and TV shows. Hey, maybe they can just make a deal with HBO and use the Boardwalk Empire sets! There’s no crime in being thrifty.

Overall, The Damned came off as a great little story that not only made for great vacation reading and got me excited for eventually watching the TV show, but also left me wanting more when it comes to this world. I’m not sure if I’ll keep this one on my shelf, but it’ll probably rattle around in my head for quite a while.