2001, Oni Press, Portland, OR, 179 pages

Bleak, brooding, brutal, blunt, and gloomily infused with a perpetual sense of winter, Guy Davis’ The Marquis is Robert E. Howard on heroin. This fantastical setting is something like 17th Century France with a Spanish style inquisition, with the added horror of demonic possession being real. Damned souls have escaped from hell and are cloaking themselves in human bodies. The Marquis is blessed with the ability to see the demons and goes about slaughtering apparently innocent ‘possessed people’ and musketeers in pitiless droves.

The Marquis Danse Macabre is reminiscent of Howard’s Solomon Kane setting, but twisted; shadowed by looming catholic architecture on a vast scale, and lacking the animal vitality of an alienated protagonist. Davis manages his murderous hero as a masquerade avenger along the lines of a modern superhero.

Guy Davis’ masked ‘Baron that watches over the underworld and hunts all that would escape’, provides a unique and fascinating look into the abyss of religious fanaticism.