It's funny, I have now read three issues of Demo, and I love each issue more than the last. "Bad Blood" is easily my favorite issue of Demo so far, as it takes a long time to get to the superpowered aspect and instead focuses on something Wood and Cloonan do very well, realistic characterization. Most of this issue involves a teenaged girl talking to her half-brother about their lives in the wake of their father's funeral. It's like a well-written drama film, an American Beauty or Magnolia that sort of explores the darker side of life... and then the ending, which is the big reveal of the superpowered aspect, hits like a fricking hammer. Fantastic pacing, beautiful artwork and another perfect reason why the single issue comic is still a valid use of the comics artform, that's Demo #3.
Cloonan has indicated that her artwork would change for each issue of Demo, and she's making good on that promise. Perhaps more impressively, despite the changes, the art is terrific in each issue. This time out, it's got an inkier quality and a little more overt manga influence, looking like a combination of Bendis, Clugston-Major and Naifeh. Her art perfectly captures the disaffected youth and desolate qualities of the script, as well as nailing the nostalgic, wishful aspects of the lead character's flashbacks.
One thing I've noticed that Demo stories have in common, other than a female protagonist, is that the stories tend to take place in something of a vacuum. Wood gives the sense of a larger world, whether it's through actual interaction like the mini-mart in this issue or the characters talking about the wider world that they live in, but the story is hyper-focused on the lead character and one or two other people. The story focuses in on one person and how their life is going, creating a character with superpowers rather than the all-too-common superpowers with characterization tacked on later.
Another thing is that though the superpowers are crucial to the three stories we've seen so far, the tales also read just fine without any superhero elements at all. Wood's story here works as a young girl trying to reconnect to a younger life she never had, and as an examination of family dysfunction, and the revelation that the dysfunction was caused by superpowers both makes a lot of sense and serves as a powerful ending, but the tale could have worked with something more mundane as well. Demo is an exploration of superpowers from a different angle, but it's very much a character-based title first, and superpower title second.
I don't want to give away the revelation in this issue because, unlike the first two Demo issues, the power reveal took me quite by surprise in this issue. It's a sudden, jarring change in what had been a reasonably reserved story, and it provides one of the weirder happier endings you've ever seen. And while Wood's pacing is a big part of what makes the ending work, Cloonan does a terrific job of capturing all the gory detail that really sells it.
