Whiplash for the Devil.
The Devil’s Workshop (1995): Cover Score 7 out of 10: Story Score 4 out of 10: First of supposedly four issues from Craig Stormon. I will describe the plot(s) below under bad. The Devil’s Workshop is interesting, at the very least.
The Good
The Good: The cover is nice. It is borderline one of those horrible eighties and early nineties covers. The costumes are ridiculous and the hair is big, but The Devil’s Workshop’s cover won me over with tan lines, seriously. There is something simply sexy about a well rendered tan line. Why three time travelling warriors have tan lines is something we will investigate below.
The Bad
The Bad: So three sexy woman who live in a dystopian future (Think Terminator 2: Judgment Day) where they fight dinosaurs travel to modern day England where they find themselves in a dance club being hit on by British car salesman.
One of our time travelling warriors gets kidnapped by a cult who is sacrificing woman to raise the God-Demon Saragar, which they will get right to doing once the deal with a heroin addicted employee who has broken some sort of rule, violated his NDA or used too much PTO, perhaps.
There is also a guy named Deathrow who I assume works for the bad guys in some capacity and about half a dozen other various characters and plot points in all of twelve pages. It’s a fucking mess. Plot whiplash is an understatement. Now I am sure this would all come together in the final three comics, but instead we have endless info dumps with the occasional tits.
The Ugly
The Ugly: The from the publisher segment (called The Cutting Edge which honestly sounds like the kind of name Frank Rosenthal would come up with) well we are talking some serious smack. They are taking their rightful place at the head of the Outlaw comics field. Verotik comes close with thier full color comics and Frazetta covers, but those losers over at Razor have no clue. You see, The Devil’s Workshop tells a real story unlike those has-beens over at London Night Studios. Apparently, the willingness to use the word fuck on the written page is a sign of both true art and true underground status.
From what I can gather between the lines, someone got fired as an inker for London Night Studios because they feared the competition. They probably would have been more scared if you completed more than one of the planned four comics.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: According to the publisher segment, this comic has been in the works for three to four years. What they were doing in that time is a bit of a mystery. Certainly not writing a coherent story. The art, however, is decent and honestly the publishers note is almost worth the price of admission. And the cover works for me. I wouldn’t make The Devil’s Workshop the center of my collection, but it is an interesting one off. If mostly or the wrong reasons.
