The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon by Barry Maher

It’s 1982. Once, he was a counterculture hero. Now he’s a failed songwriter, living under the alias Steve Witowski, and running from the law. And he’s just become a killer, after rescuing a woman from a horrific assault by what seemed to be the strongest wino in California. Steve should keep moving, but the woman, Victoria, is stunning, and oddly, she’s recently bought a decrepit old church, a former brothel. Will Steve stay and help? Of course.

Then, the face of the man he killed materializes on his arm. Within days, Steve plummets into a nightmare of fire and blood and death—while he plunders crypts and tombs and graves for the chilling secrets of a long-gone, self-proclaimed sorcerer. The spells and rituals couldn’t actually work, of course. Until they do. And unknown to Steve, a demon is growing desperate.

Overall, this was a fairly fun comedic-tinged genre effort. The great setup present, involving a rather convoluted but still immensely likable storyline where it takes a series of impressive attributes into a fun whole, starts this off rather well with not only our introduction to the main lead and why he's on the run from the police but also the eventual run-in with the new woman in his life that leads him into the supernatural shenanigans that occur here. We get a tongue-in-cheek style that introduces the main group as they slowly start to succumb to these strange experiences they fall into. The first encounter brings him and his girlfriend into contact with the other woman, who slowly starts turning their life around for the worse, dealing with the escalating danger around them.

The longer they stay together as a unit and get drawn into a series of encounters with a supernatural entity that offers more pronounced witchcraft and other impressive elements, all combined in a fun way, this slowly creates a solid setup that suffers from a slightly complex and convoluted storyline. There's quite a lot going on here, from the witchcraft angle to the black magic sorcery involved in fighting against him, a haunted church with a crazy backstory, a curse afflicting the main guy, and much more going on here, that, regardless of how fun this all comes off, it is whiplash to have all this going on. It's not that it doesn't come together in the end, but this could've easily been streamlined without so much happening that it feels like it's introducing something new every ten pages or so, but there's still a lot to like here.

4/5