The Devil That Wears My Face #5: A Personal Hell

A demon runs free in the Vatican and the soul of the priest he’s possessing might be going to hell. In short, the situation looks bleak in The Devil That Wears My Face #5. Pepose and Cormack’s horror series ratchets up the speed and tension as it drives toward an ever more demonic and gruesome ending.

Vieri’s failed attempt to kill Legion ultimately landed him in a fiery inferno. Meanwhile Legion has only solidified his position in the wake of that attack. The Devil That Wears My Face #5 follows Vieri’s soul into a hell of Santiago Izan’s own making. Vieri’s soul finds Santiago’s, trapped there since Legion possessed his body. Santiago’s is a cage of his own making, built on his guilt over killing his brother to keep him from raping Maria. Vieri realizes he knew a similar feeling, and that both of them were left open for possession as a result. In the real world, Maria finds aid in the form of Cardinal Pentecost who has found the truth of Legion’s presence. But it might be too late for anyone to keep Legion from rising to the papacy.

Vieri and Santiago’s souls’ interaction steals the show in The Devil That Wears My Face #5. It supplies a great deal of backstory on Santiago and Maria–much more than anything the series has provided to this point. It also further rounds out Vieri who we already learned in previous issues wasn’t as pious as we first thought. But the most compelling aspect is the revelation that feelings of fear and guilt gave Legion the opportunity to possess first Santiago and then Vieri.

Both cases were a matter of the characters being unable to move beyond those feelings and the incidents that caused them. In the context of Catholicism, this is particularly intriguing. A core tenet of the religion is that confession and contrition are required for forgiveness. Clearly neither of the characters were capable of getting to that point. Even without that specific connection though, it remains a tragedy. Legion didn’t have to bust the door down. It was already cracked open because of Santiago and Vieri’s internal struggles.

The Devil That Wears My Face #5 revisits demonic imagery the likes of which we haven’t seen since the first issue. Vieri’s struggle to defeat Legion and reclaim his body (and in the process save Santiago whose body Vieri currently occupies) became largely a physical struggle. There was some mysticism attached to the knife that Vieri intended to use to drive Legion out, but for a battle against a demon it lacked scope. This issue is a good answer for readers looking for that scope.

One downside of this increasing scope, though, is how Legion continues to develop. He grows progressively bigger and more over the top with each issue. This certainly makes sense. Legion is a demon, after all. But as he gains more control and doesn’t have to be quite as clever, he becomes less engaging as a character.

The aspect of Legion that doesn’t get told, though, is the way he continues to kill people in hideous ways–and this primarily because of how effectively Cormack realizes the deaths that Pepose’s scripts call for. The Devil That Wears My Face #5 features perhaps not the bloodiest but certainly the most elaborate one yet as Legion “performs an exorcism” on a priest trying to expose him. The result is an 8-panel sequence over which the priest’s body twists, snaps, contorts, and breaks until he is bent over himself backwards with his head twisted completely around. It’s disturbing without being gratuitous.

The sequences between Vieri and Santiago’s souls are awash in yellow, orange, and a lot of red. Cormack brings a lighter touch with his art in many of these panels–almost looking like a sketch–which lets the colors speak the loudest. Everything takes on an ethereal quality, as though it’s not quite real. Santiago and Vieri look appropriately terrified throughout.

The Devil That Wears My Face #5 is the first issue to prominently feature both versions of Father Vieri: the physical one who Legion possesses and the actual soul who is inhabiting Santiago’s body. Cormack effectively distinguishes between the two, but not because there is any danger the two would be confused for each other. The two characters express radically different emotions with the same face. If drawings of Vieri were removed entirely from their surroundings, the good and bad versions would be easily identifiable by expressions alone.

The white on black dialogue bubbles that are outlined in red are typically used when Legion uses his supernatural abilities. They add an extra sense of transgression when it’s used while Legion is speaking Latin. The font Birch uses for Legion’s dialogue, one that has an almost scratched on quality, works particularly well in this regard.