I'm finally wrapping up this series of four books in a wildly unorthodox order: two, then four, most of a decade ago, and one and three now that I've got hold of them. 'Volume 1' is a wonderful book and should absolutely be read first, but it's very much an introduction, not just to the characters but to the logic that underpins the series. It does what it needs to do, impeccably so, but it's there to ground us because Shiga knows how far he's going to take this concept and we don't.

Put simply, though he didn't know it until he tried to commit suicide, Jimmy Yee is a demon. When he dies, his essence moves to the nearest physical living human being. Lots of people die while he figures this out, but they're just a drop in the ocean, albeit enough to attract the attention of the OSS, whatever that is, and Agent Hunter, who apparently understands exactly what Jimmy can do and therefore wants him to work for them.

'Volume 2' escalated everything, Jimmy outrageously exploring limits through experimentation, knowledge that's especially useful when he discovers that his daughter Sweetpea is actually alive. She was absolutely killed by a drunk driver but this demon thing is hereditary so she took over his body and she's been in prison ever since. That revelation was cleverly telegraphed but I didn't see it coming. What I did see coming was the cat and mouse game between Jimmy and Agent Hunter, which continues onward into this volume.

The biggest problem Shiga had coming into this was the likelihood that he couldn't escalate once more to the same degree that he did from 'Volume 1' to 'Volume 2'. Each volume is inappropriate to outstanding degrees—heck, the whole series begins with a successful serial suicide attempt—but 'Volume 2' really pushed the envelope. Jimmy takes out an entire train, mostly populated by OSS agents but with his daughter also on board, just to get her back. And, after the OSS gives him a mission, he doubles back to take out a couple of planes and a good chunk of Tacoma.

What I have to emphasise here is that Shiga absolutely escalated again. I don't know if I can swear on a Bible that it escalates as much from its predecessor as that did from the initial volume, but it could well be. I wouldn't swear on a Bible that it doesn't. And, quite frankly, if you're wondering if you should read this book, that's all you need to know. To be fair, if you're this far into a review of 'Volume 3', then you've already read two books and anything I can say is moot. You're sold already and you don't need me to provide you an excuse to keep going.

But, in an effort at due diligence, I'll dive into a brief synopsis. Jimmy's living the high life with his daughter, but it's getting boring. They're both as amoral as each other, even though Sweetpea is still childlike even a hundred years on from the action of the previous volume. He likes the look of an actress, so suicides next to her boyfriend to get in the sack with her. He kidnaps a boy band for her birthday and she forces two of them to make out. As delightfully wrong as all this is, we need a lot more and that means he needs to talk to his granddad.

That's Dr. Robert Gellman, who really started this whole thing back in Project Azazel, and he must be the only person left on the planet who knows how to kill a demon. Jimmy knows there has to be a way because his father's body in his casket still had a head attached. Had he lived and moved to another person's body, Jimmy wouldn't have seen that head, because that's how flasticals work. If you don't know what they are, go read the first two books. I'll be here when you get back. Anyway, as Jimmy dearly wants to know, he sends him a prominent roadside message in corpses.

He does get some excellent information out of Gellman, not least that P. D. Frost, his partner on Project Azazel, was actually a demon called Phaedra, who arrived on Earth three millennia earlier from an alien world where demons were commonplace. She'd spent all that time pushing our race to the point where it could create another demon. He learns that Gellman is just as amoral as he is and their meeting, as cunningly built up as it is, turns out to be the most vicious anticlimax that we can probably imagine.

And so we jump a hundred years on again, so Jimmy can write the F word on the face of the moon with a lunar rover and shoot someone in the face with a money cannon while masquerading as an idol of some description. "Why?" asks his victim. "Because I can," he replies and we're facing a lot more of that sort of extra level privilege. "This is it," Sweetpea sums up. "You and me, wandering around one pleasure district or another for the next 700,000 years." Except that would be boring and Shiga isn't going to bore us. Instead he brings back Agent Hunter, who we thought had been a dead man for the past couple of hundred years.

And I'll shut up there, because we're back up and running, but with both sides very aware of what the other can do. Agent Hunter has been planning this forever. He has all his ducks in a row and a serious plan to fulfil. He aims to take over the world in order to create everlasting peace and he's willing to kill an awful lot of people to get there. Now 'Volume 4' makes sense to me, which wasn't entirely the case when I read it after 'Volume 2'. It's clear that's where we're going, so that's not a spoiler, but I'll shut up about everything else.

Well, except for Chapter 17. I won't spoil where this goes but I will describe it, because it's ballsy in the extreme and I can't wrap up this review without praising Shiga for going there. Things got bad in chapter 15 and we left them with Jimmy apparently dead for good, because of everything we've learned thus far. Now, we don't expect that to be the case, because Shiga's a sneaky bastard, but everything shifts to Sweetpea at this point and everything we see sets up the next outlandish cat and mouse game, one that will take us into the final volume.

But, Chapter 17. Jimmy seems to be alive but everything is different and he has no idea where he is or what he can do about it, other than nothing. Initially, it feels like he's been buried alive, not a good place for an immortal demon to be. It looks different to us too, because everything's black. Every panel on every page in the final chapter of this book, which means twenty of them, is black, except for a continual stream of thought on the part of Jimmy. It's fascinating to see layouts this unusual, as if every visual in the entire chapter has been redacted but the speech bubbles remain with all text intact. There's an entirely black double page spread, except for the F word in a single small speech bubble.

I've already read and reviewed 'Volume 4', so I guess I'm done for the series. However, this is the point I end it and I want to underline just how wrong 'Demon' is in all the right ways. It isn't just a ridiculous death toll, though there is that. It's the twisted imagination and sociopathic action the author put into play to amass it. There were points here where I was laughing aloud, which isn't a situation I find myself in often, especially when reading graphic novels. Shiga layers his twists in a way that must have taken an awful lot of late night drinking sessions to conjure up. I approve. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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