Ellen Blair is underneath the Hellscraper in LA. She’s saving souls down there. With her fists. She just exxed a conjurant. (Hell’s Wi-Fi hotspot.) She needs a cleanup and a confession. Her partner’s in the wind. Syd Miller is nowhere to be found. It’s already a mess, and it’s only a couple of pages into Exorcists Never Die #3. There’s a clever poetry to writer Steve Orlando’s script that is brought to life by artist Sebastián Píriz. Orlando and company do a very respectable job of delivering the chaos of the action of modern Christian paladins fighting demonic activity in a dark and brutal fantasy world. 

When Syd shows up, he’s under the influence of Gluttony. It’s not the usual kind of Gluttony for him, though. He’s a goddamned exorcist, and that means Gluttony’s going to grab hold of deeper desires. Naturally, there will be a conflict between Syd and Ellen. She’s ready for it. She’s been working for him for long enough to know his weaknesses. She knows all his moves. And she’s a hell of an exorcist, so she knows what she’s doing in the presence of Gluttony. She’s not going to defeat it alone. She will need Syd’s help, but first, she will have to get him free from Gluttony.

Orlando ties together action with psychological drama in a way that plays cleverly with Christian mythology and iconography. It’s a really remarkably clever fusion that continues to find success in the weird blending of badass action and the laughable cheesiness of Christian good-vs-evil themes. The buddy fantasy action genre keeps everything solidly grounded in a bloody battle to the death with evil that doesn’t even attempt to look at grey areas of moral ambiguity. Evil is a monster. Those who fight it have to be mercilessly heroic. It’s fun stuff. 

Píriz’s art embraces the action that Orlando is fusing together with the story and amplifies it. There’s a sense of overwhelming momentum about the action that feels a hell of a lot more intense than cosmic-level magic often does on the comics page. The forces at work in the issue are witheringly intense. Píriz slams them into the page with tremendous gravity. The magical forces that explode off the page seem positively apocalyptic. Píriz’s use of color can feel a bit garish in places, but the luminosity of the magic is totally in line with the level of power that Orlando is feeding into the story.

Ellen and Syd just defeated Gluttony. Next month, it’s on to Greed. THAT is something that’s been echoing around the margins of the series since the first issue. It’s going to be one heck of a dragon to try to slay as the stakes get just a little bit higher in a series that’s proving to be a lot cooler than the basic premise has any right to be. The third issue was a solid mix of jarring action and deep psychodrama. If Orlando and company can hold onto it, the series could be one of the better debuts for 2023. 

Grade: A