#david lloyd

So the piece of shit sheriff's name was Ron, and now we're about to meet his piece of shit friend. This liveblog has been the documentation of the slow death of my media literacy and nuance. Maybe put less sex crimes in your book if you want me to read them subjectively. The doctor hasn't done anything quite yet, but he does almost hit Angel with his car. Yes, she shouldn't have been standing in the road, but give her a break, she was distracted by her sense of foreboding as she nears Constantine.

Only a brief interaction with Angel, but it's enough, her questions unnerve him. Are his children happy? Does he love them? Instead of answering he speeds off, asking instead the ghost of his dead wife. He says his daughter looks like her, though I think she's a dead ringer for Lady Amalthea from The Last Unicorn.

right????

The refrigerator is empty, the house cold and eaten by poverty, the very subject of Angel's questions. The only question remains; does he love his children? No. At least not Amalthea- sorry, Kelly, because he sells her to a brothel. I told you he was a piece of shit. Delano, were these supposed to be complex moral quandaries, or just showing the absolute worst of humanity? These people are getting worse and worse, the mailman was just a PTSD scarred veteran, now we have fathers selling their children into sex slavery?

Angel witnesses this, she looks at the boy still in the car, and I wonder if he'll go bad too. We don't find out but instead Angel pays a visit to my man Jorge.

He gives her a job at the hotel, sympathetic to a fellow immigrant, unintentionally putting her on a crash course with Constantine, who senses her presence. I should have mentioned this earlier but I like how this story makes use of his whole "surfing the vibes of synchronicity" thing. He doesn't need to stumble into things or logic them out he just knows. John can have a little superpower, as a treat.

It turns out Phil the photographer gouged his eyes out shortly after their meeting, finally tired of seeing Angel's eyes everywhere perhaps? This leaves John all the more determined to face her. Meanwhile, Angel has her first encounter with a woman victim. Its the lady from the train, the one whom John called a wall of flesh, and her somewhat whiney son, Arty. It seems like the worst sin Delano can imagine a woman committing is being overweight and eating a lot.

I do like the bull sign behind Angel giving her horns. Is she the devil? Is she the sacrificial cow? It's good ambiguity!

We're given some really intense imagery representing world hunger in response to the woman eating two steaks. In text I understand Angel is aware of the real and constant suffering of people in food insecurity, and experienced it herself. BUT. Come on, its two steaks. This one rings a bit silly to me, the lady isn't even like a billionaire or someone with real power over aid to third world countries, she's literally just eating two steaks.

The starving people morph into a slaughterhouse of corpses and both I and the mother are left in shock. Is Jamie Delano a vegan? Over two steaks. Maybe this is meant to show Angel's pettiness, that she punishes people without real reason. But I still don't think that tracks with the previous two..

Arty goes with Angel, and the scene quickly morphs into one of them fleeing an unknown pursuer, trapped in the open streets

They're grabbed up by a group of masked men and killed- and I don't know what this represents. I'm not the expert!!! It's scary, that's for sure. And I think Arty actually died so that's actually horrific. I don't know what this scene was though. Let me know if you know?

Ah! That's our ten image limit!

One entry left to go. Sorry I'm all over the place on this one. I swear I really do like this story, but that doesn't mean I can't criticize it, or that I know and understand everything about it. Maybe I'll wrap up with a more cohesive conclusion on all of the themes and events and how they tie together when I'm done. It's been a while since I read this and some of it's taken me by surprise.

Anyway- let me know what you think. Are the people Angel encounters getting worse (selling your daughter...) with each new person? And if so what does that say about John being the "final boss"

Or is she attacking randomly, and that's why that mom had to see a bunch of headless corpses getting flayed for her porterhouse medium rare?

Ok this section will be a little dull visually but bear with me, it sets up Angel's backstory, it just does it in a really tell-don't-show way (this comic is great but not perfect). I'm getting ahead of myself.

Bracing himself, John rounds the street corner where the two dogs are fighting under the hollow gaze of a strange poster; its the girl from the prologue. Stopped in his tracks, John appears lovestruck (and even the dogs start humping. Classy, Mr. Lloyd) As he's drawn toward her, he's also drawn into the horror her gaze projects.

John sees himself, frozen, immovable in a barren world, as cold and hard as the ice storm that surrounds him, a storm stirred by the screams of the girl before him. He longs to yield, to be laid bare and vulnerable, to feel the storm rend his flesh and to feel the flesh of another. With a pang of empathy, the ice around him is shattered, and the girl and the storm disappear. He can move again, in this dream, and he now has a purpose.

In the real world, John awakes surrounded some concerned police officers, who mistake the whip marks from the dominatrix for a dog attack. John makes a well timed Monty Python reference and hightails it home. The girls' eyes follow him, leading him to strange grotesque dreams which he welcomes. Though his body sleeps, his soul is awakened.

And isnt he so handsome in those purple panels? A lot of artists seem determined to make John look weird, at least every now and then, but Lloyd is quite generous to him.

Now a man obsessed, John follows the trail to a photographer named Phil, catching him just before he departs on another world trip. Phil keeps a drunken detachment from the suffering he documents, his photos are for his own fame, or profit. But he remembers the girl John is asking about.

Her face has haunted Phil throughout the intervening years, sticking him with memories he'd rather forget. He does have one useful memory though; the girl is alive, and in America. He leads John to the address of the missionary family who adopted her, and they seem to part as friends. Not bad for having introduced himself as a psychopath rapist. Sometimes John's powers of charisma defy belief.

The thrill of the hunt passes for a moment, leaving John sickened with a sort of hangover as he assesses what he's about to do. He's seeing her face everywhere, just as the photographer does. Now awakened, he cannot go back to that frozen unfeeling state, and so there's nothing left to do but buy a new coat, and book a flight to America

Onboard, John's dreams return to the snowy expanse, finding himself following a path of bloody footprints which melt away in his hands. That reminds me! Someone more talented than me ought to make a music video of this comic set to Hozier's "Blood Upon The Snow" It really fits! https://youtu.be/-32-6FqGW2E?si=BS2R8aPOQlieESCv

Mrs Jorgensen's kind of pretty. Don't argue with me, I tried to date Pam in Stardew Valley I know what I like. Anyway, John charms his way inside for the second time that day, which is less unbelievable this time as he, too, is drawn really handsomely throughout this comic. Look at those big blue eyes. Who could call the police on a mug like that?

So they named her "Angel" and I wish we'd gotten a few more panels dedicated to her life with the Jorgensens. The relationship between her and her adoptive sister Kathy in particular, it sounds impossibly difficult to be taken from your home the way Angel was, and it sounds like Kathy was struggling with something as well. I'm not even going to speculate on the details about Mr Jorgensen and them. Just a troubling situation all around, which gets unfairly pinned on Angel.

Well, John at least has heard enough, and takes matters into his own hands with a ritual intended to lead him to Angel's current location. Will it work? Find out next time!

I swear I'm not trying to make cliffhangers, its just tumblr's ten image limit. As before, let me know your thoughts!

Do you think Angel really was responsible for the decline in her adoptive family? Did she have her powers then? (after all, the photo of her as a child is what's possessed John) Or did they form after death?

And why does John refer to her as a "kill or cure" case?