Zenescope - Omnibusted #68: Demons - The Unseen
a.k.a. Sean Unseen-a
I mean, there's no way in Hell I'm not, right?
Right?
Okay, that's the best I could come up with for an intro at the crack of nightfall; let's talk Zenescope!
Unleashed Tie-In
Demons: The Unseen
The cover is by Stjepan Šejić, and is also the A Cover for Grimm Universe #5. Why Masumi (the Demon slayer) is on the Zombies side of the cover and what Samantha has to do with anything are questions I can't answer at the moment, and there's no bonus material in Zombies & Demons, but like with Vampires & Werewolves, the credits and Table Of Contents background makes use of those #1A mural covers by Anthony Spay and Ivan Nunes that I mentioned in my Hunters review over a month ago.
I was honestly not a fan of the two art styles on display (Godstorm's Jason Johnson and Eduardo Garcia—Bad Girls and Jungle Book: Last Of the Species—with Wonderland #10's Ben Sawyer on colors) at first, finding them too simple and, ironically, comic bookish. But the simplicity lends itself really well to the fluid, surreal demonic imagery and the expressiveness of the human characters.
On the writing side of things, Masumi may be some of Pat Shand's best work in this Unleashed era (I'm speaking of the character here, as her eponymous miniseries wasn't out yet), and his balancing of slice of life (swordswoman puns!) and the supernatural gives us a preview of what he would bring to his later Robyn and Helsing efforts. It's clearly magnitudes beyond the "two one-note characters do their one thing for three issues until they happen to meet and affect almost nothing" writing that Mark L. Miller brought to the Werewolves miniseries, and I'm only one issue in.
Ignoring the general, fucky-wucky, timey-wimey vibe of Unleashed that can only be excused by Sela being repeatedly mind-wiped, trapped in another Realm, in prison, or otherwise occupied with multiple, consecutive world-ending threats, such that a monster deity with 90s comic-accurate muscles roamed the Nexus unchecked for a century (seriously, not even Samantha could sense the Being, and connecting with the Nexus is, like, her main passive ability) and the Hunters returned from the Shadowlands with a multi-faction army of monsters nipping at their heels without anyone noticing,....
Yeah; ignoring all of that, Masumi is an amazing character. Once an assassin, she came into possession (Demon puns!) of magic swords capable of harming, sealing, and banishing Demons, and doing other cool stuff like ki-sense teleportation. Why that is, is a cool reveal for later (I can't remember if it comes up in this miniseries or it gets saved for Masumi, but it's at least hinted at by the end of this issue, and it's cool enough that I still remember what it is over a decade after reading this for the first time), but for now, we learn that Masumi has been fighting the Unseen (it's in the title! But also it's kind of not true because even normal people can see and sense them under certain circumstances) for so long that she has distanced herself from human connection and lost her once-talkative demeanor, compartmentalizing the recursive pain of the duty she has burdened herself with.
That is, until she returned in the modern world after a century of ceaseless Hunting trapped in the Sixth Realm, and met Gerard.
Gerard is kind of Masumi's Wendy figure with a dash of Violet (the normie who's in on the weirdness and wants to help, but the supernatural protag doesn't want to lose them and tries to shoulder the perpetual battle alone), and their couples banter is appropriately cliché and adorable for that dynamic.
The paneling of their montaged romance being dynamically framed by Masumi's swords is also a nice, creative touch.
But then we get to the machinations of the Being (whom we haven't really seen get involved since Vampires) with respect to the Demons, and things start to click into place as the first issue ends.
The Demons speak in rhyme (a rather Wonderland choice of character quirk, even though it wasn't a thing in the Hunters miniseries or previous Unleashed issues), and the Being tells one particular Demon (maybe the one who attacked the family from the opening scene?) that the remaining "Four Sisters" are on their way, and a "Joining" will result in the crushing of humanity. Future Knowledge, basic Bible osmosis, and the final panel of the issue showing possessed residents of a retirement home who seem to be engaged in in-fighting, sex, and over-eating, indicate to me that the Joining is Legion, and the Sisters are Demons of cardinal sin.
To that point, the recap on the credits page refers to the Demon from the first issue's opening as Wrathful, and the Sisters are clarified (retconned?) to only be two in number.
The issue opens with a flashback detailing Masumi's backstory: a reminder that Masumi once had a twin sister named Akiko, who was completely possessed by the Demon now sealed in her swords, previously her mother's swords.
It also seems that the Demons (higher ones, at least) can choose whether they drop mad bars or not, as that Demon lapses in and out of verse on the regular, just to mess with Masumi. There are some hints at off-page dialogue (the sword Demon telling Masumi of the Sisters) that I could nitpick, but I don't feel like it.
After dispelling Gluttony and Lust from the old folks' home (their designs make it easy to distinguish which is which, but their dialogue is more ambiguous), Masumi continues trying to balance her mission with her life with Gerard (a mini Masumi could be on the way in the months ahead, if you know what I mean), and the Being gathers the rest of the Deadly Sins, suggesting there was once an eighth (who could be named Fate, or the Being is just speaking in poetic license), and if they Join, they will be Legion. So, informed hypothesis confirmed?
Also, that house Wrath attacked in the beginning? It was built on the land that the Demons were originally banished from.
Amityville Horror, indeed.
That's right, Gerard (whose last name is Ferguson, apparently) gets fridged by Demons when Masumi has to return to the site of the Sins' banishment and he thinks he can back up a century-old assassin-witch against seven of the eight most powerful Demons of all time...by teleporting in mid-fight, armed with a fucking shovel, and throws off her combat flow because he's an idiot of the most conveniently inconvenient magnitude possible. And he doesn't just get fridged, he gets exploded into a tomato condiment so thoroughly that Masumi abandons her "don't kill a Demon's vessel" rule, using the spell that her mother used to exorcise (and consequently, kill) Akiko, to pull the Sins out of their shared vessel and into her swords, reuniting them with the eighth Sin (confirmed here to be Despondency, not Fate) and re-forming Legion, but on her terms.
The dynamic between Masumi and Gerard in the early pages of this finale is cuter than ever, but it just makes his death even stupider and more of a cliché (I'd even go so far as to call it a trope, if "cliché" wasn't so negatively coded as to be more appropriate here). It gave me Will Scarlett vibes, in a bad way.
There's some great, multi-layered thematic juxtaposition that comes from Masumi's relationships with her sister, Gerard, and the Seven Deadly Sins here, regarding life, death, spiritual symbiosis, love, belonging, purpose, and freedom, and whether you get the profundity of it or "shut up; you're reading too much into a comic book, fivehead," it's a great character study with a bit of supernatural action mystery and a lot of tragic love story that turns anticlimactic and stupidly sad by the end.
We never do get to learn why Masumi got arrested in Day Breaks, but we do learn from a flashback that Shang was the one who split Legion apart (because of course he was), and we learn that Samantha wasn't just sharing the Trade cover with Masumi because they're both pretty faces in skintight costumes. Everything following Gerard's death (if not the bulk of the Demons miniseries) is set after Day Breaks and the Timelost short, and Samantha asks Masumi if she'll help Sela and Van Helsing fight back against the Being and His army, which she does, because even in tragedy (especially in tragedy), a purpose is a happier, healthier thing than a blissful existence.
And it's mildly amusing that we get some "the Being did nothing wrong" evidence as He murders the brother of the woman who was possessed by the Sins to "relieve his grief," only to reveal that this reunited the two in spirit, giving them their happy ending as well. He's kind of like one of those "what if AI took everything literally and turned evil from creativity" villains, and it's...interesting, in a coldly neutral sort of way. More interesting than the average, "I want to kill everyone and rule everything because evil and power" villains we got before and will get later on, for sure.
The Sins, for how they were foreshadowed in previous titles and given a personal connection to Masumi and her family here, felt impersonal and rushed for the most part. If Demons: The Unseen had been lengthened by just a few issues instead of following the three-issue structure of the other monster Tie-Ins, I think there was more to say and more of substance to do beyond "the portal is open, everyone is here, let's kill the love interest and get it over with."
But still, Masumi is an awesome character with good lore behind her and plenty of potential for crossing over with characters and settings new and old going forward.
I remember what some of those appropriate but unorthodox pairings are, so Stay Tuned, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about (here, I'd be interested to know which anime version of the Seven Deadly Sins would win a fight: the FMA Brotherhood homunculi, Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Mortal Sins, or the Sin Archbishops from Re:ZER0), helping out my ad revenue as you read, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
Omnibuster,
Out Of Sight.
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