‘Betweeners: Vol. 1’ (review)

Created and Written by Adam Carter
Art by Armin Ozdic
Cover by Gui Sabino
Published by Adam Carter

This book is completely and utterly nuts.

I read the first few pages and then tried to research a bit about the creative team. It did yield some rather interesting results. I wasn’t sure which way this was going to go from the onset but it does go to some truly interesting places as a whole.

This comic is for those who like the dark side of entertainment and for those who are into horror films. In fact, the whole set up feels like the beginning of a very good horror film. It has all the landmarks and it does have some pretty interesting twists during the whole thing.

The story has to do with an exorcist. In the harrowing opening sequence, he sees an exorcism happening.

It is so visceral and crazy that I was immediately into this book. There were a lot of layers being explored and introduced right from the beginning so let’s take a little time and unravel them, shall we? It took me a few times to get it all straight but I enjoyed figuring it all out.

We get to meet Shane Beck in the opening of the book. He’s an exorcist of some renown.

But we quickly learn that this person is not Shane Beck. Okay, then who the hell is he?

Well, we find out that Shane was possessed by the soul of a guy named Mike Baxter.

Okay, who the hell is Mike Baxter?

Mike Baxter is a grifter who seemingly died in the 1980s. His soul has been going around hell in all sorts of ways. He was suffering in hell in the worst possible ways one could imagine. He had no hope. Until he found a way out by possessing Shane Beck. And boy, does he make good use of it.

This is where the premise gets interesting.

Baxter, using Shane’s body, performs these exorcisms as a way to stay one step ahead of the demons from hell that are hunting him. This concept leads to a lot of good times in this volume and a lot of interesting narrative moments. The biggest twist of all is when Beck’s estranged son makes a sudden reappearance in his life. That’s when things really start getting out of hand.

Baxter has no idea how to be a father. Watching him try to connect to a son that isn’t even his!

His “son” James isn’t the easiest person to get along with either! They have a lot of struggles and all of them are entertaining. Then, a demon from hell tracks the two of them down. That is when the two of them must band together to try to get away from this demon before everything gets blown to hell literally!

The action happening on the page really starts to pick up at this point. As the action starts to ramp up a lot of things happen all at once. Father and son must work together to try to escape their predicament. If they can’t, the demon might indeed rat them out and that will literally bring all of the forces from hell on their front doorstep.

The book is at its best when you get to see this mismatched duo try to work together.

They have a hard time at first. But as the book goes on, they have to learn if they are to survive. By the end of this volume, we get to see everything that has happened so far turned on its head. The characters are so fun that you just can’t wait to see what happens to them. You can’t wait to see the decisions that they make. And you certainly can’t wait to see the consequences of what they choose. It is very fun to read.

The writing by Adam Carter is very good. He isn’t afraid to take chances and to put these characters through their paces. He makes it all very interesting right from the first sentence. The artwork by Armin Ozdic does a great job of showing who these characters are.

The storytelling is very good and I was interesting throughout. I cannot wait to see where this goes from here. The world building is excellent and I am really excited to see where this ends up going.

RATING: A-