Where are we heading? Is There Life After Life? Is nothing but nothing waiting for us? Or maybe death on Earth opens the door to another, fantastic world for us? The duo of Mark Millar and Greg Capullo tries to answer these questions that have haunted humanity for centuries. They show us a vision of an extraordinary world - a kind of high fantasy on steroids.
Reborn – Reborn is a cooperation between two creators from the comic premier league – screenwriter Mark Millar ( Kick-Ass, Kingsman – Secret Service ) and cartoonist Greg Capullo (most of the most important stories about Batman in recent years). Such famous names bring a lot of expectations. Especially against Millar, who is as popular as he is a problematic artist. Typically, his plots, although endowed with an interesting starting point, are mired in the shallows of simplifications, repeatedly used deus ex machina and brutality that serves more to shock the reader than any other purpose. Has the author managed to avoid these traps in the reviewed title?
All dogs go to Adystria
We meet the main character, Bonnie Black, in the hospital, after another stroke. She knows that death is near, she remembers her life, but cannot come to terms with the fact that this is the end of her journey. When she dies and opens her eyes again, it turns out that she has moved to the battlefield, in a completely different, alternative reality.
Moved to a new, fairy-tale land, Bonnie is attacked by creatures unknown to her. She is saved by her long-deceased father and her childhood dog. She is no longer an eighty-year-old old lady; young and beautiful is reborn. He learns that good people go to Adystria after death, while bad people end up in the Dark Lands. For as long as her father can remember, there has been a war between the two places. The Dark Lands, with its leader Golgotha, have evil plans that can only be harmed by our heroine. According to the prophecy, she is the person who will restore order, put an end to the Adystrian kidnappings and prevent the domination of criminals and degenerates. However, before she becomes queen and devotes herself to a new role, she wants to find her murdered husband.
Not fairy-tale
For sure, everyone has wondered more than once about what awaits us in the next life (and is there anything at all?). The starting point that the afterlife is a place straight from fairy tales and fantasy promises a lot. Millar chose a pulp convention infused with kitsch, but exaggeration is not bad in itself; and can often be an asset. However, in the case of Rebornnot everything went well. What is most interesting, i.e. the world presented and the characters of the characters, have not been properly developed. The heroes’ journey in search of Bonnie’s deceased husband captures attention and deserves more space on the pages of the comic. Unfortunately, the developers do not provide this. Our heroin turns out to be typical Mary Sue. She’s perfect to the point of pain, she doesn’t do anything wrong, she’s never wrong, she gains power without any effort – she’s just boring. Not only does she fall pale herself, other heroes and anti-heroes also do not stand out against her background.
Spoiler alert!
Without revealing too many details, the more the plot unfolds, the more the presented world becomes internally contradictory. These inconsistencies could be accepted if it were decided in this volume to tell something more than just the banal story of the fight between good and evil. One of the biggest problems for me, however, is not adequately explaining how the underworld works. Our heroine, despite the fact that Adystria is 10 times larger than Earth, meets many friends from her previous life. And each of them plays an important role in the fairy-tale land. The chief bad guy also had contact with Bonnie and her husband. So how did this reality function before, and what was its story like, if everything revolves around the heroine?
Another example of failure to think through the depicted world is the very concept of death. The creators assume that man is defined, there is no social rehabilitation, you cannot redeem yourself in this new life. One is either bad or good, period. As much as you can understand the idea that the better you were in life, the stronger the figure in the afterlife. From the very beginning, we learn that the new incarnation in the afterlife works quite randomly – some take the adult form, others are children. Why? The writer did not deign to answer. Additionally, you can die in the afterlife (often in a very brutal and very typical Millar style). So what’s the point of a “stop” in Adystria and the Dark Lands? Especially that a few frames indicate that after dying in a fairy-tale land, you still end up in the “standard” underworld / heaven / hell. How much more interesting would be the idea of reincarnation on boosters, in which you end up in a different reality with each death. Unfortunately, the imagination of the creators did not reach that far.
Visuals and edition
The artwork is above the comic book average. The frames, as in Capullo’s, are dynamic, there is no shortage of blood and carnage. The colors are beautifully saturated, the frames are interesting, and the character designs and the appearance of the world catch the eye.
The Polish reprint of the comic book should also be appreciated. The collective issue of Mucha contains all the current notebooks with Image (1-6) along with additional cover illustrations as well as an interview with the authors. The whole thing is neatly presented in a hardcover.
Is it worth it?
The comic isn’t bad, but the number of disappointing elements makes it not worth paying attention to in my opinion. Despite the fantastic frames and interesting lines, the story is simple and the characters are fine. In 2016, Millar signed an exclusive agreement with Netflix (its logo even appears on the title page of Reborn), and the streaming giant is said to have plans to screen Bonnie’s struggles in the afterlife. It remains to be hoped that the film will manage to get a bit more out of the idea.
