Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Reanimator #1

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Reanimator #1



    Reanimator #1
    Released by: Dynamite Entertainment
    Released on: April 8th, 2015.
    Written by: Keith Davidsen
    Illustrated by: Randy Valiente
    Purchase From Amazon

    It's been some time since we last caught up with Doctor Herbert West but thanks to the magic of comic books, everyone's favorite mad scientist is back in this new four issue limited series from Dynamite Entertainment. Written by Keith Davidsen and illustrated by Randy Valiente, the story begins in New Orleans where a lab worker named Susan Greene is selling some stolen goods from her place of employment to a criminal named Fleece. Where she once felt excitement in her work, she's now nothing but bored: the thrill is gone. This deal goes south fast - see Susan wants this to be her last deal and for that reason, the crooks have no incentive to pay her and every reason to want her dead. Before they can make that happen, a bespectacled man in a lab coat and glasses shows up. He's an excellent shot and he saves Susan's bacon.

    Of course, this man is Herbert West and along with him is a massive creature swathed in rancid looking robs that West refers to as The Velusian, and this 'thing' is one of West's own creations. As West explains his work to Susan, he putters about and injects the recently deceased thugs with the contents of a familiar looking syringe. Before the freshly reanimated corpses can get too out of hand, The Valusian takes care of them while West offers Susan a job as his assistant. He likes what he sees in her and after he makes a pretty convincing speech, she accepts.

    Cut to a former orphanage known as Hamilton House three weeks later - West and Greene are hard at work. It is here that we learn how West is funding his experiments in reanimation by refining the pineal glands of dead vagrants and selling it as a euphoriant called Eunique. West and Greene make the deal, unloading a carton of the drug to a crime syndicate and warning them to only use it in very small doses, cautioning them about side effects. Of course, there's one man out there who pays no heed to West's warning, a wealthy man named Rex seemingly obsessed with bringing about the rise of Cthulu…

    At one point in this issue Susan describes her work with West as a mix between Frankenstein and Breaking Bad and that's not a terrible way to describe the events of this first issue. West is West, he's written very true to character here and Keith Davidsen seems to have a good feel for the way that he speaks and the way that he operates. West has always been willing to do whatever he deemed necessary to continue his experiments 'repurposing the dead' and if he has to resort to creating and selling an exclusive narcotic to do so, that really doesn't seem so farfetched when you think about the character's history. The speech patterns are here, the obsessive and single minded behavior, and complete lack of a sense of humor and the drive, the ambition that make Herbert West an interesting character - it's all worked into the story and the story is all the better for it.

    Valiente's art takes some getting used to. You'd expect he'd draw West with a strong likeness towards Jeffrey Combs but he doesn't really do that here, instead giving the character a slightly more generic appearance. There are times where his line work reminds us of early Tim Vigil, before Vigil got hyper-detailed, as it has that same sort of loose sense of movement to it. Panel layout can often be interesting here and while Valiente's style is a little sketchy sometimes, once you get used to it his art is fitting enough. All in all a decent first issue that sets up the possibility of interesting things to come. It ties into some interesting Lovecraftian themes and ideas, some of those references are more obvious than others, and shows a good bit of potential.






      Posting comments is disabled.

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    Working...
    X