Falling In Love On The Path To Hell Vol 1
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Garry Brown
Colorist: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Publisher: Image Comics
Publication Date: January 2025
First things first here — boy, how about that title? Falling in Love on the Path to Hell is one of those comics (or movies or books) that really tells you what it’s about right from the jump, right there in big bold letters. Fortunately, the concept here is poetic enough that it still sounds intriguing, rather than hammy or too-forward. So yeah, when you crack this comic, the creative team has already made you an explicit promise about where things are headed — and then they set about delivering on that promise. And they do so in gritty and entertaining ways.
This series, which collects its first four issue in a trade paperback out this month, is the work of veteran comics creators, including writer Gerry Duggan, artist Garry Brown, colorist Chris O’Halloran, and letter Joe Sabino. It is to some extent a genre-bending book, or maybe I should say genre-mashing, to be more accurate. Set in the 19th Century, this comic combines elements of a gunslinging western, a complex dynastic samurai drama, an otherworldly war story, and monster horror. The foundation all of it grows from, however, is the titular romance.
What I liked the most about this comic was the artwork. Brown has always been a great artist for brutal and pugilistic comics, with some of his most memorable work in recent years being the Viking story Black Road and the oil industry revenge thriller, Crude. Those are both great-looking books with grounded art, wherein you can really feel the punches (and kicks, and stabs, and beheadings).
That said, Falling In Love On The Path To Hell felt like a next evolution for Brown’s artwork, in everything from the page designs to the way the afterlife ideas push his imagery to a place I’d describe as cosmic. The overall aesthetic is still quite gritty. We are, after all, very much in hell (or rather in purgatory, en route to hell). So, a lot of the artwork is fairly grounded, gritty, and combat based. In the first issue alone, we get a multi-page gun fight in an old timey church…followed closely by a multi-page outburst of samurai warfare.
As the story progresses, however, Brown is able to deploy flashes of otherworldly visual ideas, and this is where his artwork truly shines in the book. The other element that raises the visuals is the color work of O’Halloran, who in my opinion is one of our best working colorists right now. O’Halloran is able to raise the depth of both the bloody combat scenes as well as the romance that develops slowly as our story progresses, giving them their own distinct palettes while keeping the entire book warm and creative. It’s really impressive to me how well the two artists work together in these pages, especially without the established visual shorthand of any one genre to fall back upon.
Duggan’s scripting is also really well-done in this book. Once again owing to the eclectic nature of this concept, he pens a pretty wide range of prose, from the twangy old western dialect of the cowboy character, to the clipped English of the samurai, to the striking and orienting captioning that runs throughout. The plotting, which sees Duggan and Brown working together, is also steady if a bit predictable, with the romance starting reluctantly (as romances in fiction so often do) before heating up as the characters spend more time around one another. But it’s hard to ding the book for predictability when — as noted at the start — the title by-design tells you exactly what this comic is setting out to do.
Overall, I enjoyed Falling In Love On The Path to Hell Vol 1. There’s a bit of unevenness in the density between the chapters here. Some issues took me twice as long as others to read, and as a result, I found the pacing to be a bit distracting. But the book is overall very well done, from the career-best artwork by Brown to the cheeky boldness of the title. It’s also the type of story that feels outrageous (complimentary) in a way that makes it a perfect fit for comics. I recommend joining these lovers on their path to hell.
Falling In Love On The Path To Hell Vol 1 is available now
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