Graphic Content: The Devil That Wears My Face written by David Pepose and illustrated by Alex Cormack

 

God bless Mad Cave Studios! I say this as a horror fan and a fan of horror graphic novels. They might not have the same name recognition as Image Comics or Boom Studios! However, this means that they’re able to establish themselves as the scrappy underdogs of horror comics, and scrap they do. They don’t post inflammatory posts about the major comic companies or challenge editors to street fights, but they garner attention by coming up with the most unusual subjects for their stories, often throwing away traditional genre conventions. Their latest horror series, The Devil That Wears My Face, written by David Pepose and illustrated by Alex Cormack, calls itself “‘Face/Off’ meets ‘The Exorcist’,” and no other elevator-pitch-style tagline sums up a series better. 

In 1740, conflicted priest Father Vieri was summoned to Spain to perform an exorcism. The demon known as Legion has killed lesser priests who have tried to force him out of the Spanish nobleman in which he resides. When Vierti tries to remove the demon, Legion turns the tables on him and ends up switching bodies with Vieri. Now Legion is loose in the Vatican, spreading violence and chaos wherever he goes, and Father Vieri, whose captors believe he is the possessed Spanish nobleman, must stop Legion in his body before he burns the Vatican down. 

This book and Cormack’s gruesomely gory artwork, featuring people not just murdered but exploded, plants it firmly in the adult horror category, along with its use of demonic possession, but Pepose’s story owes a lot to Face/Off, the face-switching action film from the ‘90s, not only in its plot similarities but in its overall tone. This book zooms at an action movie pace as the stalwart heroes try to apprehend Legion and stop the demon’s carnage. And the delightfully evil Legion himself hams it up in a way that would make Castor Troy, Face/Off’s main villain, proud. Movie fans who gravitate between Jerry Bruckenheimer action and James Wan splatter might enjoy this horrific trip to 1700s Italy.