Synopsis
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.
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.)