WARNING! I discuss plot points from the final scene in issue one. I wouldn’t exactly call them spoilers (well, only in the sense that they spoiled the story for me), but if you’re the kind of person who gets antsy when reviewers divulge such details, then I suggest you check out these spoiler-free reviews at Comic Attack! or Bloody Disgusting News in lieu of reading mine.

When I visited my local comic shop yesterday, I noticed the first issue of Devil shelved alongside Alice in the Country of Hearts, Megaman, and Panic x Panic. Dark Horse has been aggressively promoting this four-issue mini-series as a Western comic with an otaku-friendly pedigree, a collaboration between manga-ka Torajiro Kishi (Maka-Maka) and Madhouse Studios (Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Ninja Scroll, Trigun). I read a short preview online, and while the premise didn’t grab me, the sharp, noirish illustrations did. Curious to see if Devil was more interesting than those first four pages suggested, I bought a copy.

Boy, was I sorry.

The story’s flaws are evident from the very first pages, when we learn that a pandemic is sweeping the globe, transforming its victims into vampires — or, in the series’ lingo, “devils” — and forcing Japanese authorities to use strong measures to stem the carnage. After a raid on a “devil” apartment goes awry, Toriko, a shoot-first, ask-later cop, finds himself partnered with Migiwa, a female officer who does things by the book. The two trade barbs about their respective qualifications — Toriko is a jaded veteran, Migiwa has spent more time dissecting vampires than fighting them — but set aside their differences when they’re summoned to a terrifying crime scene.

A police procedural is a sturdy platform on which to build a horror story, but Kishi never does anything remotely interesting with the set-up, choosing instead to doggedly imitate every other movie or TV show about a pair of mismatched cops. The story’s been-there, done-that quality would be easier to take if the dialogue was entertaining, or the characters more than ciphers, but the script is earnest and clunky: the devils suffer from “Serious Injury Chronic Bloodsucker Disease,” the agency tasked with eliminating them called “The Devil Investigation Section.” Toriko does little more than utter terse sentences and smoke like a chimney, while Migiwa blusters about the infected’s civil rights and makes assertions that Toriko quickly shoots down ’cause he’s seen it all and she’s a n00b who follows procedure.

Though the character designs are crisply naturalistic (the humans, anyway), and the color palette suitably lugubrious, many of the scenes are poorly executed. The opening sequence provides an instructive example of the kind of continuity problems that plague issue one. In the first panel of the sequence, Toriko confronts a vampire clutching a woman under his arm, engaging the vamp in a tense discussion that prompts it to leap through a window. Though the sequence unfolds over several pages, we never see the vampire cast the victim aside, drop her, or take any action that suggests that he’d been holding a body, alive or dead; he simply jumps, unencumbered, through the glass. Sloppier still, the victim only appears in that first panel, never to be shown or mentioned again; it’s as if Kishi completely forgot she was even in the scene. The sequential flow is further interrupted by Migiwa’s arrival midway through the stand-off; it’s never really clear where Toriko is standing in relation to her or the vampire, making his abrupt execution of the vampire all the more disorienting.

Kishi’s character designs exhibit similar inconsistencies. In the issue’s big climax, for example, Toriko and Migiwa confront an S-Class, or super-powerful, devil. In some panels, the vampire appears fully human, wearing tattered clothing, while in others, he looks like Dr. Manhattan, a glowing, naked specter whose spinal column is clearly visible through his rippling musculature. (Which begs the question: if I can see his muscles, why can I see his vertebrae?) The vampire’s appearance varies so radically from panel to panel it feels as if a transformation sequence got scrambled in the transition from storyboard to finished layout; I found myself flipping back and forth to try and make sense of the changes.

The thing that really bothered me about Devil — more than the artless, exposition-heavy dialogue, more than continuity problems — was the casual way in which sexual violence informs the plot. Near the end of issue one, we see a vampire brutally assault a young woman in the back of a police cruiser. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the victim swells up like a grotesque, flesh-colored balloon, then explodes. Yes, you read that right: the poor girl literally explodes after being raped. If that wasn’t violation enough, Toriko’s explanation of why she died is even more stomach-churning: “When a victim is raped by a devil,” he notes, “the victim dies from the poison contained in its sperm.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this icky plot twist, given Kishi’s background in ero-manga, but jeez… killer sperm?! It would be laughable if it weren’t in such utterly poor taste.

The bottom line: given how sloppy, sexist, and self-serious Devil is, I can’t think of a reason why I’d continue buying it, no matter who’s drawing the panels.

DEVIL, NO. 1 • BY TORAJIRO KISHI AND MADHOUSE STUDIOS • DARK HORSE • 32 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)