Heck

Straight from the pages of the hit digital series DOUBLE BARREL! It's his own personal Hell. After the funeral of his estranged father, faded hometown hero Hector "Heck" Hammarskjöld finds himself the new owner of the old man's house... and inside it, a portal to the underworld! With few other prospects on the horizon, Heck goes into business settling inheritance disputes by contacting the recently deceased, accompanied by his faithful sidekick Elliot. But when an old flame knocks on their door with an important message for her late husband, Heck and Elliot embark on an terrifying journey down into the nine circles, braving the horrors of Hell for an assignment that will reveal more than they ever imagined. Award-winning cartoonist Zander Cannon (The Replacement God, Top 10, Smax, The Stuff of Life) collects his serial from the hit digital magazine Double Barrel into his long-awaited first graphic novel: a story of memory, friendship, and regret, where the past is dead and buried... but not out of reach.

From Booklist

When erstwhile high-school football hero Heck Hammarskjöld comes home for his father’s funeral, he reencounters former classmate Amy, whom he’d like to get to know again, while his old team’s water boy, Elliot, swarms all over him with renascent hero worship. But alluring Amy is married, annoying Elliot is persistent, and so when Heck takes over the creepy old house in which he grew up, the latter comes in handy with the cleanup job that uncovers a gate to hell on the premises. Five years later, newly widowed Amy becomes an early client of Heck’s new business of taking messages to hell and back. Cannon really runs with this setup, telling a morality tale within the trappings of a harrowing adventure that tests all three principals—Heck and, reduced by injuries during an infernal exploratory expedition to a mummy-like drone, Elliot down below and Amy up above. Cannon adopts Dante’s moral architecture pretty thoroughly, just simplifying it—not watering it down—for the purposes of his slighter conception. Sturdily drawn, a helluva good (i.e., virtuous) comics caper. --Ray Olson

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