Written by: Mark Millar
Art by: Greg Capullo & FCO Plascencia
Publisher: Image
I can’t think of a comic in recent memory that started with so much promise and then dove so quickly into terrible. Hell, even the new run of Green Arrow had the decency to offer us a steady decline into what is a complete mess, but Reborn threw all of its dignity and good storytelling out the window halfway into issue #2.
The good news is my heart can’t be broken when it doesn’t care; the bad news is Reborn deserves better.
Millar isn’t the first person to turn the afterlife into a fantasy story, but his bizarre mix of high fantasy and science fiction certainly felt new at the end of Issue #1. I was excited! I was ready for the story to go in a fun direction, to match the giant, armor-clad dogs and Star Wars looking spacecraft. I was also hoping it would do something smart with the, “The afterlife is just another world only with magic,” thing.
Instead Reborn is the most basic of high fantasy. The good guys are very good, the bad guys are very bad, and everything else is everything else. There are dragons which are boring, elf-like fairy things which are boring, action sequences which are boring, the promise of hidden powers which are boring, and a half-assed attempt at garnering sympathy by killing the dog that will so turn up alive two issues from now because that’s what happens in these kinds of stories. The dog is never dead. The dog is pocket deus-ex machina for chapter five, and we’re supposed to cry tears of joy because Roy Boy is magically not a corpse now.
Reborn is everything I hate about the genre, only the main character is wearing a stupid sci-fi helmet to add insult to injury.
On top of that, this thing is just kind of a mess. We got an idiot riding a flying elephant on page one—probably the definition of cute and whimsical—and then he’s dragon fodder on page two. I don’t know how I’m supposed to process that other than a shrug and a generic, “‘Kay.” The characters are shocked, but I think that was supposed to be funny.
The comic is filled with these moments, like our helmet protagonist beating up some bad guys in what might be the lamest action sequence I’ve read this year. She ends the fight with a, “I don’t know how I did that!” Of course, prior to her little escapade she went, “I got this.” So which is it lady? I mean, I rolled my eyes regardless, but I want to know why! Are you supposed to be a badass or an ignorant superhero?
Meanwhile, everyone is dead, and people can double die which is a much more interesting question than whatever is going on.
Also the artwork is okay.
Reborn #3 is so entrenched in bad high fantasy that only a complete genre flip could save it at this point. I don’t see that happening though, because that would require something interesting to happen.
