Morgainne and Mordu Failed a Charisma Roll
Oh look, Etrigan's on the cover again. What a surprise. It seems like lately I've seen more covers that are misleading in a bad way. Effective misdirection involves lots of subtlety across a long period of time to surprise readers. These are more like The Village. Not nearly as bad, but similarly misaimed. There is an 'enemy within,' but it has nothing to do with why Etrigan and Jabr are fighting. Not that they even actually fight, just Jabr and Jason Blood; but any excuse to put the most well known character in the spotlight right? It's a shame because this actually isn't a bad cover, Mike Choi has balanced excessive detail with simplistic design to a really nice effect.
This issue mostly deals with Mordu and Morgainne's attempts to corrupt out so called Demon Knights, to an amazing degree of failure. Their approaches always seem logical, but end up biting them right back in the face. That's pretty much the entire extent of this issue, and to avoid spoilers I don't want to go into each encounter and recount why they're brilliantly done; you should just see for yourself.
But aside from each encounter's success as a scene, they also finally get to the key element of what this series has been missing. Getting to know our characters. Each scene establishes so much about each of our main characters, and so after this issue you'll finally have a much greater attachment and sense of direction for each of the protagonists involved.
And there's even some nice little development in some of the villagers leading into some little subplots that weave a nice lacy extra bit of substance to this series.
In Conclusion: 4.5/5
Aside from a few minor hiccups, this issue is exactly as good as when the series began. Now we have a feel for the characters, motivations for each, and the sense of a unified goal starting to form. If you've been leaning a little away from this series due to the anonymity of the characters, give it this issue to suck you in.
