Comic Book Review: Lake Of Fire #1- Cathars, Catholics, Crusaders & Creatures

Illustrated by: Matt Smith
Written, Coloured & Lettered by: Nathan Fairbairn
Publisher: Image
Release Date: 24th August 2016



I haven’t written a ‘proper’ comic book review for a very long time now, having being put off my sometimes hobby due to an avalanche of same old, same old PC programming coming from just about every bloody comic book that I read today.

After all, how many times can you moan about Cultural Marxism programming coming from painfully emasculated PC writers before all you are doing is repeating yourself?

In my experience, not long, and so I stopped doing the weekly reviews, returning only when I found something that was worth writing about because it offered something different, either good different or bad different, just different.

All I really want is different, but in the consensus liberal comic book world of today, different is very, very rare. If you like teen girl heroes with oddly masculine characteristics then you’ll love the state of the comic book industry today, but I’m a guy in his forties, so sorry, call me weird, call me misogynist, but I just can’t relate to teen girl protagonists and their ass kicking shenanigans.

Lake Of Fire #1 isn’t about a teenage girl kicking men in the face. It’s different and that is why I’m writing about it now. So, what is it about? Without spoiling it for you (and I suggest you buy a copy of the book immediately) it’s about a group of believable people dealing with an unbelievable situation. It’s set in the time of the crusades, when the Catholic Church was getting very worried about the Cathars, a group of pacifist Christians who were actually living their lives as good Christians and thus exposing the hypocrisy of the not so Christian Catholic Church. Set amidst the backdrop of that historically fascinating time the narrative follows a group of very believable characters with recognisable human motivations, flaws and personalities. When you read the characters you get the sense that you are reading about real people, not agenda driven wish fulfilment characters that you get in so many mainstream comic books today.

The comic book alchemy in Lake Of Fire #1 is really quite simple. Take two elements of realism (convincing human characters and historical accuracy) add the third element of sci-fi fantasy, mix together, and you have created the perfect comic book magic potion that will delight, enthral and entrance the readers.

The art, by Matt Smith, has a knowing, but not annoying knowing, sense of humour to it. It’s friendly, but not too friendly, there’s danger there, lurking, like a walk in the park, everything is soft and fluffy, but then it starts to rain, it’s getting dark and oh crap, can I hear something stalking me? Everything is very clear, easy to understand, there’s no smoke and mirror messing around with the panel layouts and the individual characters are distinct and easy to distinguish from each other. The artist understands his role in this undertaking, he understands that the writing is bloody good, and so he does all that he can to enhance the story without making it all about himself and distracting from it.

That’s all I’m going to say about the book. I don’t want to spoil any of it for new readers. Look at me, read my other reviews, look at my other reviews on YouTube and you’ll see that I’m a big old bearded complaining git who spends three quarters of his time slagging off comic books. Lake Of Fire #1 is not your average comic book. It’s bloody good, loads of fun, so get onto ebay, go to your comic book shop, do what you have to do. Get the book, read it, enjoy it and you can thank me later.


Rating: 10 /10 (In a different league to the vast majority of comic books on the market today)


Never heard of Cathars? 
Click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

Comic Book Review: Demonic #1- Conflicted Cop Drama #60,86,88,888,872,33

Writer: Christopher Sebela
Artist: Niko Walter
Publisher: Image
Release Date: 18th August 2016


I’m going to write a comic book. It’s going to be about a sexy demon girl telling a man to do bad things. What kind of man can I use for that purpose? He has to be a good man, a conflicted man, umm, how about a cop? Yeah, a homicide (that means murder) cop, and he can have a partner and they can banter like those television shows about cops, and the movies about cops and the books about cops, cops, cops, cops, cops, cops, cops everywhere, hunting serial killers and lone crazy nut people. Man, I love cops.

2nd panel featuring George Bush Jr and Condoleezza Rice 

Oh and if the lead cop is a white guy then I guess his partner will have to be black, and female, yeah, that’s progressive, that will do.

Okay then, so I have my cop character, I’ll make him look like Matt Damon and give him a tight T-shirt with biceps attached. Yeah he’s generic, 2-D paper-thin, but that doesn’t matter. I can flesh him out with a wife and young daughter, yeah, that will do.

Good guy, conflicted, and I don’t even have to do any research because, well, this guy, the conflicted cop guy with wife and young daughter is a big block of television cliché, done a million times to death already, which means that it works, so why do something new when something old always works so well?

Okay then, conflicted slab of generic with Morgan Freeman, female version partner, so far so blah. Umm, how is my sexy demon girl going to make captain cop generic do bad things? I know, make his daughter ill, that will do, daughters are always ill or kidnapped in television dramas, so I guess that we’ll start with ill, then throw in the kidnapping later.

The demon girl can get him to do bad stuff by promising to make his daughter not ill anymore and he can have the get out clause that he’s only doing it to bad people and it’s making his daughter not be all ill and stuff.

Crazy person cliche alert

Perfect, and throw in some serial killer axe murderer cult demonic clichés with a bucket of mangled body parts, guts and blood that you can only see in an ‘adult’ comic and we are off to the generic races of cliché demon, cop story irrelevance.

Err, what does this have to do with anything in the world today? Nothing, and to prove that I have nothing whatsoever to offer I’ll write the entire first issue with no mention of any modern technology.

That means no cell phones, no Internet, no Pokemon Go, nothing, just generic city murder stuff and bars where depressed men drink whiskey like a 70’s television cop show.

Man, I’m a genius. I love being a comic book writer in 2016, it’s the perfect place to hang out if you have absolutely nothing to say, and want to get paid in peanuts for the privilege of doing so.

I’m feeling really good about this one. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I see television deals in my very near future.

Ah, it’s good to be alive. I wonder what’s going on outside? Ah, who gives a crap, reality sucks anyway.

Rating: 1/10 (1 point for the cover)