By J. Keith Haney
Davis, Guy. The Marquis: Danse Macabre. Oni Press (September 28, 2001). USD $17.99. ISBN-13: 978-1929998159.
In a medium that is too-often known for its over-the-top spectacle, Guy Davis has earned a well-deserved reputation, as a comic artist, for fusing the mundane with the horrific. You’ll find no supermodels or rock-jawed heroes in Davis’ work, just ordinary people you might pass on the street sometime, complete with all the physical imperfections you might expect (the most common being a few too many pounds on their frames). This is in contrast to his detail work of his backgrounds, which are second-to-none. Whether you’re talking about a rotting tenement or a grand high cathedral, Davis pencils in every last stone and blemish to it. Then there are the monsters…oh, yes, the monsters. Davis’ monsters are usually nightmares of skin and pus and rubber, missing eyes, or having exaggerated mouth or sharp teeth. The sourcebooks for White Wolf’s World of Darkness (both versions) would be much duller things to look over without his drawings in them. Then there’s his comic work: Sandman Mystery Theatre, with Matt Wagner as writer (joined later by Steven Seagle), showing a late 1930s still struggling with the tail end of the Great Depression; Baker Street, his brilliant alternate history where World War II never happened, but the game of evil is still afoot; or this month’s entry, The Marquis, a fanciful 18th century France overrun by demons.
In the fictional city of Venisalle, perpetually snowbound, Vol De Galle is living out a quiet, uneventful retirement from the Ministry of Inquisition in the Ministry’s old age hostel. He is a pious man of the faith, revering a Saint De Massard who supposedly rescued Jesus from Hell and saved everyone from damnation (hokey, perhaps, but the Church has had a lot of odd stories like that in the real world over the centuries). He finally goes to satisfy an itch of curiosity one day as to the city “confessional”. Supposedly, there is where you get rid of all your sins and become holy enough to enter
Heaven. De Galle finds out why people think that. The “confessional” is nothing but a sanctioned, sanctified brothel, playing to every vice that this society can conceive of so long as it happens within its doors. All the sinners therein wear masks so that no one can recognize them outside it. But what really shatters De Galle’s faith is when he walks outside the confessional to see something through his own mask, a demon actively possessing a human being. When the mask comes off, only the man can be seen. The mask goes on, the demon comes back.
That night, he makes a prayer for the tools to fight such things…and is answered. Someone he takes for Saint De Massard gives him a sword stick and a pair of rotary pistols to cut down the demons and send them back to Hell. The demons recognize him and give him a name: “De Marquis”. There’s only a few problems. First, the process winds up killing the host in question. Second, there is a suggestion that what De Galle is experiencing is only in his head, as no one else around him sees what he sees.
Third…well, let’s just say that, provided De Galle isn’t delusional, he’s a little off as to the identity of his patron….
The beautiful thing about this story is that it demonstrates the limits of both faith and reason. The Minister of the Inquisition, Mercea, is so convinced (or wants to convince everyone else, a lovely bit of haziness) that the Marquis is a devil from Hell that he actually disposes of evidence and browbeats anyone which points to the contrary. General Herzoge of the Armies is absolutely convinced that the supernatural has nothing to do with it. It’s just a man with a few outlandish weapons. He gets a rude education on what the Marquis is capable of that makes him doubt this. Vol De Galle truly has the worst of both worlds. He puts so much stock in both his own faith AND reason that he keeps blocking out anything that points to other, uglier possibilities. He acknowledges his possible madness, but who he truly serves is almost too much for him to bear.
Costumed vigilantes have been in vogue since Batman came out in Detective Comics #27. It is refreshing to see Davis make a twist on both setting and psychology for such a character that I would urge everyone to see this out. Unlike Vol De Galle, you will not be disappointed by the offer.