Covenant
www.webtoons.com
Ezra, a powerful exorcist with no faith in God, is tasked to protect a seemingly normal human from rising demonic forces. With his church under scrutiny and the threat of war on the horizon, will Ezra find his conviction in time? Or will Sunny suffer the consequences? ​

Title: Covenant

Type: Webcomic

Year: 2020-?

Country: United States

Genre: Action

Status: Ongoing (review as of chapter #77)

Platform: Webtoon (read here)

Appropriate for 30+?: Not especially

My rating: 2.5/5 stars

(Rating scale: 5/5 = masterpiece, 4/5 = quite good, 3/5 = mostly good, 2/5 = bleh, 1/5 = I regret ever being exposed to this series, 0/5 = affront to humanity)

Covenant is by no means a bad series, and has very little that’s wrong with it, but it also doesn’t have a lot of strengths either. The pacing is fine, the art is erratic but generally acceptable, the supporting characters are more interesting than in most series (but that’s a very, very low bar), the action scenes are decently choreographed (but so are hundreds of other action webcomics), and the dialogue isn’t brilliant but definitely avoids being cringe. I didn’t find the plot that engaging, and despite being low-key bored I stuck with the series for way longer than I should have because based on the premise, I kept expecting the series to at some point dust off the cobwebs of the setup and take off.

The premise has potential: a secretive sect of Catholicism where humans form pacts with angel patrons to gain special abilities, primarily the wielding of holy weapons, so they can fight any demons that might make their way to Earth. On the plus side, this is a breath of fresh air among the sea of “monster gate,” monster dungeon," and “generic superhero” series that currently dominate the fantasy action genre. However Covenant simply does not live up to the high standards set by using Christian mythology as a setting; there are, after all, thousands of years of media using this as inspiration, and it’s pretty difficult to bring something new to the table at this point (especially with the recent uptick in demonic-themed media: Lucifer, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss, etc). Not that Covenant doesn’t try, however the problem is that at the end of the day, the Christian mythology theme is little more than an aesthetic: you could easily replace all the Biblical references to generic fantasy/JRPG gibberish and barely affect anything.

Covenant is a very queer series, in an “everyone’s apparently gay and no one gives a shit” kind of way, so at least the series adds representation to the sub-genre, but romance is a very minor part of the series so this too feels mostly aesthetic (with a few subtle gender swaps, you could make all the characters straight/cis and have almost no impact on the plot or character development), plus we’re a good 15 years out from having an LGBTQ+ cast alone be a notable quality (and again, they’re currently in good company; the previously-mentioned Hazbin/Helluva world is also very queer, and WAY louder about it).

While the series generally lacks the worst of young adult fiction cliches, Covenant is definitely YA fiction. Which is fine, but I don’t think there’s much here for the 30+ crowd.