Ahh, so there is room for the Hot Topic, goth-and-witch-loving crowd in 2019.
Seriously though, it's hard not to find 'Exorsisters, Vol. 1' so appealing and endearing.
It's basically about two sisters, Cate and Kate Harrow - well, they're not really sisters; Kate is Cate's soul, which makes them literal soul sisters - who are detectives of the occult. They hunt down demons, exorcise demons, help people to get out of contracts with demons, travel to Hell a lot, play lawyers in Hell, play executioners in Hell... in other words, they're badasses. The sisters are not pretentious goth teenagers starved of attention - they are women on a frightening and thrilling mission.
There is also their mother to deal with. As in, she made a deal with the devil a long time ago that involved her poor, only daughter's soul, during desperate acts. And there's a flying bug ex-boyfriend called Buzz (heh, karma, and sadly he's not Jeff Goldblum), literal fallen angels making dubious decisions, and the threat of an evil darkness - an anti-existence entity, an oblivion - worse than Satan...
'Exorsisters, Vol. 1' is campy and cool, reminiscent of 'Scooby-Doo' and shows like 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Wynonna Earp'. I haven't seen 'Supernatural', which this is constantly compared to, so I can make no comment there. 'Exorsisters' is hardly the first to make that pun in its title, either - it is the title to a classic 'Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors' comic issue. But with so many things in pop culture it can be measured against, it's able to stand on its own by its characters.
Cate and Kate (yeah, that will get confusing saying them out loud) are polar opposites: Cate is the strategist, the bibliophile, the tidy, smartly-dressed Wednesday Addams goth girl; while Kate, the soul, is the wild child, the punk rocker, the alcoholic, she of the snarky comebacks and one-liners. Their relationship is complex (understatement) and subtle, but they do care for each other and would do anything to keep together, through Hell and back.
For all I enjoyed the comic, altogether, surprisingly, it is a little underwhelming. The sisters don't get to accomplish much on their own. Any action they take at the end of the last issue doesn't work, and the cliffhanger makes them look like ineffectual dunces. There are overt Christian themes throughout, which is bizarre for a modern mainstream comic, and I'm not sure many readers will be comfortable with that. The clear good-and-evil, light-and-dark divide is pretty shallow storytelling. But at least there are characters, even an angel and a satanist, who show three-dimensional traits and a grey moral compass.
I still recommend 'Exorsisters, Volume 1: Damned If You Don't'. The colourful artwork is great, and the characters are memorable, charismatic and sharp. The horror is not too scary for younger readers (though it contains harrowing, mature themes), the violence is restrained and never too gory or gross, and it's snappy, clever and thoughtful enough that it doesn't talk down to its audience.
So it goes right up there with 'Spell on Wheels' and 'Misfit City' in contemporary comics about kickass women dealing in the supernatural and the mysterious.
Demon-hunting, occult-sating, finger-licking good.
Final Score: 3.5/5
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