Dominion: The Fist of God

by Thomas Fenton, Jamal Igle, Steven Cummings

Synopsis:

A gripping supernatural thriller of biblical proportions...quite literally. When detective Jason Ash arrives on the scene of a particularly strange murder in the suburbs of New Orleans, little does he know that he is about to take on the case of a lifetime. As dead people begin to come back to life, revealing that they hail from a realm where angels fight for power, it becomes clear that an epic battle between good and evil is at play, one threatening the very future of humanity.

This third volume, Dominion: The Fist of God, pulls Thomas Fenton’s comic to an abrupt end. There’s been some development up to now, but it feels like this third act is rushed more than ever: having barely accepted his powers in the previous book, and not really yet understanding them or ready to cope with them, Jason Ash gets a lot shoved onto his shoulders all at once. Nothing less than saving the whole world will do!

I think there’s some interesting setup in the story between the Legion and the Dominion and whoever the Thorn are exactly, but the character design of all the angels is way, way too similar, and it gets really hard to tell who is who and what side they might be on. Combine that with the rushed story, and it feels like half the detail gets left out.

Someone on Amazon did make the comment in their review that this is really the middle of a story: the beginning lies back in the mists of time, alluded to as Jason learns a little more about what’s going on, and the end is in the unknowable future. Jason’s been caught up in a story that began long ago, and will continue; we just see him joining his place in it. That makes a certain amount of sense to me, but I still think there are a lot of gaps in the implementation here.

Rating: 2/5

Dominion: The Resurrection of Jason Ash

by Thomas Fenton, Jamal Igle, Steven Cummings

Synopsis:

A gripping supernatural thriller of biblical proportions...quite literally. When detective Jason Ash arrives on the scene of a particularly strange murder in the suburbs of New Orleans, little does he know that he is about to take on the case of a lifetime. As dead people begin to come back to life, revealing that they hail from a realm where angels fight for power, it becomes clear that an epic battle between good and evil is at play, one threatening the very future of humanity.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the page numbering and so on with Thomas Fenton’s Dominion, as the versions of each volume on Amazon have only around 50 pages, though elsewhere they consistently get shown as 150 pages. The cover images match the cover images for the versions with 150 pages, so… it’s just weird.

So hopefully what I’m reading isn’t just a fragment missing the last two thirds, but I can only read what’s available, in any case. Volume one of Dominion feels fairly typical: the beginning is a little confusing, but then it switches to the point of view of a young cop, who quickly gets drawn into a conflict involving angels (and gains strange powers as a result).

That’s about as far as this first volume goes, with the conflict wrapped around the story of child kidnappings that gets the cops involved. I’m curious where it’s going, but it feels like I’ve seen this story around before… several times.

Still, I’ll be picking up the next volume to see what the author does with the setup, so though I’m fairly lukewarm, it’s not that the story was bad.

Rating: 2/5