This week in Dominic Deegan has seen the full reappearance of Dominic’s brother Jacob – necromancer, villain, and all around spooky guy.

Now, in this case, Dominic has called him in as something of an ally, in order to investigate a scene of massive death and devestation. The interest at hand is the pursuit of knowledge, and he is able to lure Jacob into helping him – at least for now. This means we get to see the two of them working together, and this is fantastic. 

I like the characters in Dominic Deegan, and Mookie has moved past a lot of the hurdles that had been bothering me a few years ago – but the interaction currently going on between Dominic and Jacob is hands down some of the best he’s ever written. See, one of the issues that had been cropping up was that Dominic began to overshadow pretty much every other character – with his insight, he was the one who had to solve every problem and right every wrong.

Which, to be fair, is the premise of the comic, but still – it meant no one else could stand with him on equal footing. It meant there had to be an entire story arc devoted to the idea of other characters solving problems specifically without him.

Jacob can stand on equal footing with Dominic. He isn’t an ally, he is a foe, as skilled in his own field as Dominic is in divination. He has always been capable of keeping Dominic off-balance, which is a feat almost no one can manage.

He is, after all, Dominic’s older brother.

This is what the last few pages have done a fantastic job of showing. We manage to both have the simmering hostility of, essentially, mortal enemies momentarily entering into a truce… while at the same time we can still see the bickering unique to siblings, and see how well they each know how to push each other’s buttons.

Now that’s how you write a damn good comic.