The realm of the dead and those who talk to them get a whole new skew in the first issue of IDW’s I Can Sell You a Body. Writer Ryan Ferrier introduces the character of Denny Little: a guy who can not only contact the dead but actually find new bodies to place them in. The paranormal action-comedy is brought to rubbery life on the page by artist George Kambadais. The debut of the new series conjures-up a clever concept in an urban fantasy setting that feels fresh and distinct. The first issue may throw a lot of weird concepts around, but Denny Little’s down-on-his-luck-gumshoe-like milieu keeps the world grounded in familiarity. 

Denny Little has made a small fortune out of a small office. His workplace isn’t just the shabby, little office space he operates out of. It’s also the whole of the afterlife. For a price, he can not only contact your dead loved ones...he can actually find a new home for them in a whole new body through the process of reverse exorcism. He might seem as totally together and unspeakably unflappable as any successful salesman. Still, he’s been paid a ridiculous sum of money by someone involved in organized crime to return the one guy in the whole of the underworld he can’t contact. If he doesn’t do something, HE is going to wind-up dead. 

The premise of reverse exorcism for cash out of a seedy, little office is very clever. Ferrier has chosen a really solid gumshoe detective milieu for Little’s world that serves the premise well. It takes a lot of narrative guts to introduce a premise like this and then floods the protagonist’s life with a host of problems that he has no control over. It runs the risk of being cluttered. Thankfully, Ferrier seems to know the exact amount of story to cram into a single issue. Is it overwhelming? Yes...but so is Denny Little’s life. So it works. And it works well. 

Kambadais’ rubbery cartoonishness keeps the story from veering off into a very, very ugly direction. The goofy visual of Little in a white shirt, black tie, and man-bun feel fresh and familiar at the same time. Live in any city, and you might have run into this guy a dozen times without realizing it. Little’s slightly cartoony expressiveness lends levity to a story that could have easily come across far darker than it does. This is a story about a man willing to make money off dead people and their living loved ones. A good portion of Little’s charisma comes from Kambadais’ ability to make even a black eye, and a disheveled appearance look cute. Elsewhere, a beautiful woman who is similarly down on her luck asks Little for help. She could have been drawn to be dazzlingly beautiful, but Kambadais finds a way to make crushing beauty look totally approachable without compromising its power. Kambadais has a very deft sense of balance.

The first issue of a promising new series feels like it might get cluttered really, really quickly if Ferrier doesn’t slow down things a bit after the first issue. It’s been a dizzying introduction to Little’s life. Now it’s time to sink into it a bit more and explore the premise with greater depth...otherwise, this thing is going to sink beneath the weight of its plot elements. 

Grade: B