MERRY CHRISTMAS

I had some high hopes for this one. I should know better.

ESSENTIAL KILLRAVEN VOL.1
Written and Drawn by Various
Published by Marvel Comics

KILLRAVEN has long been one of those “holy grail” sci-fi comics, a book pointed to as being an underrated and under-appreciated icon of the 70s. Upon reading this collection, I can officially say “NO” to that.

Yes, the concept was terrific: branching out from H.G. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS, a second Martian invasion took place in 2001 that left the earth in ruins. As the series begins, it is 2018, and Killraven and his fellow rebels are on the run and making attacks against their evil Martian masters. Okee doke. There are plenty of cool, nasty creatures and mutants to fight, likeable characters in Killraven’s band, and exciting adventures.

But, my God… the writing. The horror. The horror!

KILLRAVEN was blessed to have some of the greatest artists ever work on his stories. P. Craig Russell draws the bulk of this book! Plus, you get efforts from Neal Adams, Gene Colon, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema, and Howard Chaykin! It is no lie to say that there is some truly brilliant artwork in these pages. But the writing ruins most of it, and you just have to shake your head, disgusted.

“But Marc!” you say. “Whatever could be so awful as to make those men’s work suffer?” And I give you two words: Don McGregor. Don “I never met a panel I couldn’t overcrowd with pointlessly turgid prose” McGregor. That would also be Don “I make Bill Mantlo read like he’s terse” McGregor. Which gets proved here, by the way, because Mantlo does a couple of the issues in this book, and they do read as terse compared to McGregor’s stuff! I’m telling you, it’s horrible. Tons of extraneous text that takes away panel space from the page. Long expository captions that crowd out the action. Dialogue that not only repeats the expository captions, but that also makes George Lucas sound like Mamet. Plus, some of the stories jump around so much that you can’t find the narrative line once it’s been dropped. One character seemingly dies or is injured horrifically during an attack that kills two others, and you don’t find out until two issues later that he survived, and he isn’t even injured at that point. It’s headache inducing.

So as pretty as this might be, there is no conceivable way in the world that I could ever recommend this. Too many flaws, and not enough payoff, makes my Christmas gift to you all the savings of the $17 you might have spent on this book.

/Mason