KIT STABS A MAN IN THE DICK.
That is the worthy highlight of this issue. I even had to double-check the panels thrice just to make sure such a gruesome yet hilarious thing happened. From now on, I'm nicknaming our Irish rose as Kit "Dickstabber" Ryan. Has a nice ring to it, ennit? Anyway, let's talk about the second installment of Fear and Loathing.
Last issue, we have Garbiel the archangel having a crisis of faith and meet-cutes a young woman named Julie who instantly tries to comfort him like any aspiring love interest would. Meanwhile, John gets caught up with some racist shit while also trying to get information on how to get the upper hand on the Devil again because the First of the Fallen is still after his arse.
When Gabriel left the Cambridge Club to go have an existential moment in the streets, a jerk named Charles Patterson was fraught and had him followed, only to discover that Constantine's opinion about Gaby's elitist ways is making the angel doubt about his role as a celestial...or something. Whatever it was, Patterson piece of shit is not having any of that and so orders his goons to abduct and kill John's girlfriend Kit.
This is how this issue opens with two men confidently breaking in and striding towards Kit so they can do what they want with her--only to have said woman stab one of them in the fucking dick using in a kitchen knife, and the other maimed by a nail-deep smack in the cheek. Nobody saw that coming. Patterson didn't. Those guys didn't. I didn't. But it was so stunningly ingenious that I gotta shake both Ennis and Dillon's hands for bravely going there and depicting its glorious bloody mess.
GOD, I LOVE KIT.
However, this issue wasn't just about dick-stabbing your would-be abductor like a badass and totally just walk away from that. This issue also managed to take an upsetting turn when one of John's mates, an African American bloke whom he wanted to help because he and some of his other friends are being terrorized by racist hate crimes lately, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Patterson's goons kidnaps John and he tries to step in to help but one of them gleefully cuts up his face and crushes his throat. Yeah, it was fun when Kit got violent and gory with a bad guy who deserves it--it's another when an innocent man already getting enough trouble in his personal life ends up dying brutally all because he was connected to John. I hardly knew the guy but his unfair death left me cold.
The floodgates of John's issues open after discover yet another friend dead and he is indirectly responsible yet again. Patterson had the sick sense to leave his friend sitting beside John as he had John tied up. His friend was within reach but John can't do anything to save him because he was too late. So had to listen to him take his slow and agonizing dying breaths. And then, he loses consciousness and dreams of Kit. He dreams of seeing her in a shoreline somewhere, and she looks at him despairingly.
So things in this installment escalated quickly. I know I've been talking about how humdrum the series has been since Ennis took over but with the sordid and unsettling ways this issue delivered, I almost want to take back my previous complaints.
RECOMMENDED: 8/10
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