The Marquis: Inferno [Paperback]

Guy Davis (Author, Artist)

Book Description

Series: Marquis | Publication Date: August 25, 2009

In eighteenth-century Venisalle, faith governs life and death, and the guilty hide their shame behind masks, showing their faces only in the secret rites of the confessional. It is to this stronghold of the Inquisition that the souls of Hell have escaped to possess the living, spreading sin, murder, and chaos. Amid the carnage, one man is blessed with the clarity to recognize the demons that prey on his countrymen - and the means to return them to the fires of Hell. But as the stakes rise, the lines separating good and evil begin to blur, and the Marquis - the dark avenger whom even demons fear to cross - finds himself torn between the blind faith that has defined his life and the bitter truths exposed under his new sight.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this morality adventure set in a starkly rendered 17th-century France, the eponymous protagonist dons a carnival mask and hunts escaped souls of the damned. The twist is that behind the marquis's mask is no dashing hero but a geriatric church inquisitor named Vol de Galle who is pious, fearful and uncertain of himself. He has good reason for doubt; the escaped souls inhabit the bodies of lowly French sinners who look like regular townsfolk and only de Galle can perceive their true beastly forms. The marquis leaves a trail of corpses that soon has the authorities, religious and secular, hot on his heels and places him in the center of a debate over his real nature, the provenance of his powers and the true measure of his faith. That overlengthy debate is mere background for the real matter at hand: disgusting devil-monsters dying in interesting ways. Davis's artwork features pages of heavily inked cityscapes crammed with gothic spires and rococo entablature, and squat and grotesque characters—both satanic and human—drawn in high contrast black-and-white. It's an entertaining if not always serious outing. (Sept.)
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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse (August 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595823689
• ISBN-13: 978-1595823687
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #721,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a masterwork of graphic fiction, August 27, 2009

By 

Lars Kingbeard (Galipoli) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Marquis: Inferno (Paperback)

The Marquis is brilliantly illustrated, well-written, and compellingly original. Guy davis displays a real skill for staging, backgrounds, and camera angles that is rare in western comics. This is a fully realized and darkly disturbing vision of an alternate baroque Vienna, where demons prowl the streets in the guise of men.

Dark Horse has done an excellent job of gathering together all the extant Marquis material and collecting it in a single, very reasonably priced volume. You get Danse Macabre and Intermezzo (the 2 previous tpbs), a new version of les preludes, the original les preludes, a lengthy sketchbook, a cover gallery which includes the striking covers for the French editions of Danse Macabre and Intermezzo, as well as a small gallery showing an earlier, never-published version of the first issue of Danse Macabre.

Don't throw away the original Oni editions of the Marquis just yet, however. The new version has been recolored a fiery orange-yellow (only one issue of Danse Macabre is in color, the rest of the Marquis is black and white), and its debateable whether this is an improvement over the original red. Also, the sketchbooks are more extensive in the Oni volumes. But perhaps the biggest caveat has to do with the printing. Darkhorse has printed the Marquis on slick, glossy paper with rich, reflective black ink. The overall effect is to greatly increase the contrast to the point where you see each little dot of tone and scratch of the pen. To my eye, the Oni version on newsprint with a much duller black is more harmonious and atmospheric, the tones blending together more subtly to suggest volume.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary Premise; Decent Execution, May 2, 2010

By 

shaxper (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Marquis: Inferno (Paperback)

Who could possibly argue with a 18th century holy man toting machine guns and taking down demons hiding amongst the living that only he can see? The Marquis is a fantastic character concept further strengthened by heavy, thoughtful considerations of absolute faith to abstract gods, subjective perspectives in storytelling, and questionable sanity in our unreliable narrator/protagonist. Add to the mix one of the most imaginative and visionary artists in the comic book field today, and you should have one unstoppable work of art.

There are some problems that get in the way, though, and the most obvious of these to me is the dialogue. One wouldn't expect a machine gun wielding vigilante to spend much time talking, but most of this volume is made up of the Marquis either talking to himself or to the demons he hunts about his motivations and beliefs. His dialogue is then interspersed with repetitive talking between Inquisitor Morsea, the governing figure of this faith-based society, and Herzoge, his slightly athiestic general. The two banter back and forth about whether the Marquis is a demon and whether or not people should be governed out of religious fear, but the discussion never progresses. It's much of the same each time they talk (which happens in every chapter).The dialogue by The Marquis and between Morsea and Herzoge is exceptionally concrete and obvious. Very little is left unsaid or is left to suggestion, and the parts that are left to suggestion are abundantly obvious. The reader isn't left with anything to consider or discover on his/her own. Instead, the characters speak every thought and motivation they have. Even when Herzoge bites his tongue, the pictures speak loudly for him.

Another problem is in part of the premise, itself. Part of the allure and intrigue of this series (as Davis even expresses in the sketchbook section) is the level of uncertainty we're supposed to feel as the Marquis struggles with his own certainty of faith and of sanity. We're supposed to wonder whether or not he really is seeing demons and whether or not he really is blessed by the saints. Well, the latter is answered absolutely by the end of the first storyline (Dance Macabre), and the former is answered by the mere fact that the Marquis has machine guns (which a soldier clearly observes and comments about early on). If a supernatural being didn't really empower the Marquis to take on his crusade against actual demons, then where did he get machine guns in the 17th century? Clearly, he didn't invent them in a moment of delusional madness.

Finally, Davis' amazing art is actually problematic at many times in this volume. His style is exceptionally loose and abstract which, when combined with a tremendous amount of lines and detail, makes the comic very hard to read in small black and white panels. This is partially the intended style of the book, and so it's worth pushing through, but it does make the action confusing and the faces difficult to identify. Guy Davis is the kind of artist that should have classes taught about him because it truly takes a certain level of understanding and familiarity to fully read and appreciate his artwork, but the effort is ultimately worth it. Still, larger panels would benefit this series immensely.

The fact is, The Marquis remains an amazing premise, and nothing is done so badly in this first volume to prevent the concept from realizing its full potential later down the road. Sparser, cryptic dialogue, some secondary character development, more ambiguity in the general premise, and larger panels would result in an amazing realization of all the premise's potential. Fortunately, much of that begins to occur in the final story in this volume, A Sin of One. It's clearly a cut or three above the previous stories and leads me to believe that we can expect great things from volume 2, though it may be quite a while before we see it. In the meantime, this is still fantastic reading, as well as the ground floor of what may prove to be a legendary comic book storyline for the ages.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absoutely one of the best comics ever created. I'm not exaggerating., November 5, 2009

By 

Arvid Nelson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Marquis: Inferno (Paperback)

Guy Davis is an absolute treasure. Beautiful architecture, hideous monsters, gorgeous costuming: no one does it quite like he.

The Marquis is the perfect showcase of all of his unique talents. And the story is as beautifully crafted as the artwork. I won't give any of it away.

If you're even remotely on the fence about getting this -- if you stumbled onto this page by accident -- buy Inferno! Just do it! Let it take you away. You won't regret it. I promise.