Hiyama Vol 2 - Devils Within

Squaddie musician turned graphic novel artist Gruff79 returns with the second instalment of his Hiyama series, except it appears that he is in HM Forces no longer and has also moved to the land of hobbits, settling in New Zealand.  Whatever else this may mean, I suspect that this move has given him the space to dedicate more time to his comic artwork and it shows in Volume 2, entitled Devils Within.
 
We've moved on a couple of years since being introduced to the Hiyama family, it's now 2021 and the country is still dominated by lawbreakers and gangs, despite the rather gruesome massacre of the feared Conner gang.  The immediate aftermath of this action sees a drop in crime by a staggering 31%, but it doesn't take long before other criminal elements step forward to fill the vacuum.    Alongside this, prison overcrowding leads to the release of criminals who should be locked up, an action that forces Mei Hiyama to take vigilante action in order to satisfy her sense of justice.
 
This eventually leads her back to newly promoted Police Commissioner John Torrent who provides her with more targets for her unique law enforcement techniques.  Ever present in the background is the growing mystery of a spate of child kidnappings, reaching a peak of 27 in a span of only 3 months.  No leads means that there are other priorities for Mei, but this changes when daughter Bee disappears, presumed kidnapped like the other children as she has been undergoing martial arts training with her grandfather.  Distraught at this sudden turn of events that directly effects her family, Mei goes on the warpath and god help anyone who gets in her way…
 
I quite enjoyed the last instalment of this planned six part series so was quite looking forward to seeing where this instalment took us.  I wasn't disappointed.  The socio political themes are still there, but take almost centre stage with Mei Hiyama dispensing justice to released rapists, brutal landlords and even bullying parents before tackling child trafficking.  It's comic art so the story itself is more simplistic than other mediums, but it's effective and works well.  The tone is a bit darker than the previous volume, with a parental advisory label on the rear cover, but it's all the better for it.
 
One of my previous concerns with Gruff79's work was in the editing and thankfully editorial control has been tightened for this second book, with nothing to distract me from the story being told this time.  There was also some inconsistency with the artwork, which was presumably due to Volume 1 being worked on during the artist's spare time, there are no similar issues this time around. My only criticism now is that some scenes just take too many panels to get going.  I suspect it's the artist's intent to build tension within the scene, but this doesn't work as well within this medium as it would with film or TV.   Again, some editorial control should remove frames that are extraneous to the story unfolding, but this should in no way infer that I didn't like this. 
 
I thought that Volume 2 was a big improvement on Volume 1 and was a real page-turner.  I was much more engrossed in the story that Gruff79 was attempting to tell in Devils Within and really enjoyed it.  The artwork was consistently good, the story engrossing with a more personal motivation for our protagonist this time round, the dark tale of the crime-ridden streets of future Britain only a step or two away from reality if you strip away the surface gloss and peek into those dark corners where few dare to look.