Rachel Rising Vol. 1 The Shadow of Death

Title: Rachel Rising Volume 1 The Shadow of Death

Series: Monthly Ongoing

Publisher: Abstract Studio

Creative Team: 

            Writer & Artist: Terry Moore

Genre: Horror, Suspense

Rachel wakes up in a shallow grave.  She has no memory of how she got there or much of anything in the past couple days.  Her neck is bruised and her eyes are blood red where they should be white.  Rachel manages to find her way home.  She quickly enlists her Aunt Johnny and best friend Jet to help her try to unravel the mystery of what happened.  (If I ever make an anti-bucket list of things to avoid doing before I die, being buried alive will be at the top of it).  Rachel begins to wonder if she survived the incident that led to her burial or if she has died and come back.  If all that weren’t enough, Rachel keeps seeing a strange woman whose appearances always precede someone’s death.

This series is creepy.  It’s a smart kind of creepy.  These days in horror anyone can give you a jump scare.  It’s cheap and easy like a hot pocket.  Anyone can gross you out with the right sound or the right image (again, like a hot pocket).  Rachel Rising doesn’t try to give you gross, squishy, jump scare horror.  It is delivering something eerie, something that feels wrong and disturbing on a deeper level.  That is the kind of horror that I love.  It’s the kind of horror that’s much harder to pull off.  Moore delivers it like an old pro.  I don’t know if he’s written anything else in this genre before but he certainly has a handle on it.

Rachel is a little low on tact these days.

Aside from being great horror, Rachel Rising is an excellent example of how to positively portray women in comics.  In mainstream American comics, that’s sort of like finding a unicorn and a leprechaun having a splash fight in the fountain of youth.  Ok, it’s not quite that bad but it’s bad enough that finding a comic that features real women is still something to be applauded.  And by real women I mean, Terry Moore is not drawing ridiculously exaggerated girls who seem to be perpetually posing for Maxim.  But anyone who’s read Moore’s work before shouldn’t be surprised by his remarkable grasp on the female form.  It’s also the first comic I’ve reviewed that’s passed the Bechdel test.  And when I say pass, I mean it in the sense that Stephen Hawking would pass a high school algebra test. 

What is the Bechdel Test?  I’m so glad you asked.  Alison Bechdel is a comic artist/writer who wrote a comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For.  It ran from 1983 to 2008.  As I understand it, it’s on hiatus right now and still may be brought back.  In one installment, one of the characters says that she will not watch a movie unless it satisfies 3 rules.  One: The movie contains at least 2 female characters.  Two: Those two characters talk to each other.  Three: When they talk, they talk about something other than men.  It is absolutely ridiculous how few works of fiction can pass this seemingly simple test.  The test is all about drawing attention to the flagrant gender bias that exists in fiction.  That all being said Rachel Rising has 3 strong female leads who after 6 issues have only talked about relationships with men for a couple pages at most.

Beyond passing the Bechdel test I get the feeling that Terry Moore is purposely drawing a gender line in the sand for his characters.  Most of the men presented in the first volume of Rachel Rising are portrayed as degenerate in one way or another.  There is really only one male character so far portrayed as a decent human being and he was only present for a page or two.  Beyond that we are presented with abusive, rage-filled, possibly necrophilic men.  Moore even goes so far as to have all female dialogue in rounded word balloons and all male dialogue in rectangular.  I have my theories as to why this is but it would be rather spoiler filled.

Like they say boys speak in rectangles, girls speak in ovals.

Rachel Rising is the comic I never knew I always wanted.  I don’t know how long Terry Moore is intending the series to run but if subsequent volumes are as strong as the first I’m hoping for a long exciting run.  Do yourself a favor and pick up this series to get your October started off right.

Grade: A+

Richard Stark's Parker The Hunter

 

Title: Richard Stark’s Parker Book One The Hunter

Series Type: Yearly Ongoing

Publisher: IDW

Creative Team:
            Writer & Artist: Darwyn Cooke

Genre: Crime, Noir

It took me about 10 pages into The Hunter to realize I had heard this story before.  Over a decade ago, I drove an hour out of my way to see Mel Gibson play this character (renamed Porter instead of Parker) in the movie Payback.  I know that movie may not have been the best received but I absolutely loved it.  I immediately bought the VHS (yep) upon release and eventually traded up for the DVD (No Bluray yet.  I’ll keep you posted).  I knew it was based on a book but over the years I had forgotten which one.  So there I sat only a couple minutes into Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of The Hunter and I already knew I loved the story.  The only question was Cooke’s presentation.  Would he nail it or not?  (Spoiler alert, he nailed it).

The resemblance is all in the thick eyebrows.

The Hunter is the first in a series of comics by Darwyn Cooke adapting Richard Stark’s Parker Novels.  As I understand it, there are 16 novels by “Stark” about the Parker character.  So far Cooke has adapted 3 of them.  Richard Stark is one of the numerous pen names for the rather prolific, Donald Westlake who passed away about 4 years ago.  I haven’t read any of his novels (under any pen name) but I’ve really enjoyed the adaptations I’ve come across so far.  So hats off to Mr. Westlake and hats off to Darwyn Cooke and Mel Gibson for bringing him to my attention.  However, my “To Read” pile just increased by about a dozen and half.  Worse things have happened.

Parker hates when people try to talk to him when he's on the phone.

On to the story with minor spoilers!  You have been warned.  The Hunter is about a man named Parker.  Parker, like Madonna or Prince, is long past the need for more than one name. Parker’s story in the Hunter is about as basic as it gets, revenge. Someone tried to kill Parker and made the mistake of not finishing the job.  Before you go feeling sorry for Parker I have to say that he is a
bastard.  If there’s anyone that probably deserves to die it’s Parker but that’s sort of the fun of the story.  For a tale like this to work the people Parker is after have to be worse than he is.  They are worse, to be sure.  But fortunately for Parker while he is no worse than his prey, he is clearly smarter.  To say anything more than that would spoil the story. And in all honesty, saying even this much spoils the near wordless cold open just a little.  (There’s the minor spoiler you were warned about). So I’ll keep my mouth shut on the plot and move on to the quality.

First off, you can get each volume of Cooke’s Parker novels in trade form or in hardcover.  Do yourself a favor and buy the hardcover.  IDW has put out a very slick looking package.  Cooke’s art has always had sort of a Bruce Timm-Batman the Animated Series look to me.  Since all of those DC comics superhero shows always had a wholesome feel, it’s a little jarring to see that sort of style used to depict a world of violence, drugs, and prostitutes.  After regaining my bearings I have to say that I really enjoyed that art.  The characters are well rendered and I mostly could tell who everyone was just from faces.  The white, black, and blue color scheme served the story well.  I have to wonder if Cooke will shift his third color from volume to volume.  The black and blue look worked well with this very bruised feeling story but maybe red or green would fit the next story better.  I don’t know.  I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

Cooke does a great job of sitting back and letting his art tell the story.  A picture is worth a thousand words, yet some comic writers still attempt to describe what you’re looking at.  I think this happens a lot more in non-fiction indie comics.  So I was pleased to see Cooke knows when to draw and when to write.  It’s hard to properly pace a comic with several wordless pages but Cooke pulls it off with finesse.

After seeing Mel play the character in Payback all those years ago I’m glad to find out there is more to Parker’s story.  I’m excited to see where Parker’s path of destruction leads next and I’m happy to have Darwyn Cooke to lead me there.

Grade: A+